The Sustainability, a Relevant Approach for Defining the Roadmap for Future Nuclear Fuel Cycles

In the framework of the COP21 agreement of December 2015, nuclear energy could help mitigating the global climate change together with the renewable energies, due to its low green-house-gases emissions, its reliability and its high base-load capacity. However, the political uncertainty in many countries about the future of nuclear energy source clearly illustrates that there is a need for a global approach to compare nuclear energy with other energy sources and draw its potential future improvements. Indeed, beyond the well-known economic aspect, many other criteria are also implicitly considered when choosing a relevant energy mix to be implemented in a given country. This rather recent situation requires extending the classical approach based on the technological and economic optimization to a wider approach also including the overall environmental footprint and the more general social acceptance. Sustainability approach includes the different criteria describing the environmental, economic and societal fields. Therefore, it may be relevant to identify the current key figures of nuclear energy, and help to identify the most promising improvement directions. In this paper, we propose to assess the current nuclear fuel cycles regarding the different sustainability criteria. We will also address the most relevant improvements to be implemented in the future to ensure the sustainability of nuclear energy and support its development.