Nuclear power plants, reprocessing facilities and waste repositories all face a common challenge: processing liquid effluent generated from operations.

Some of these liquid effluents have  a strong toxicity that can be damaging to the environment.

Treating liquid effluent is a difficult task as some of these by-products have been stored for decades on site and their exact composition are unknown. Moreover, the clean-up activities are expensive and requires careful planning.

Some tanks containing these hazardous materials cannot be connected to an external effluent treatment plant.

As they are liquid, these effluents cannot be disposed and a balance between cost-effectiveness and treatment has to be found.

Until now, traditional techniques were focussing on ion-exchange resin packed in columns which comes with a number of constraints such as clogging, pre-purification step, risk of ionisation exposure during replacement.