At a nuclear waste site in Normandy, robotic arms guided by technicians behind a protective shield maneuver a pipe that will turn radioactive chemicals into glass, as France seeks to make safe the byproducts of its growing reliance on atomic power.
The fuel-cooling pools in La Hague, on the country’s northwestern tip, could be full by the end of the decade and state-owned Orano, which runs them, says the government needs to outline a long-term strategy to modernize its aging facilities no later than 2025.
While more nuclear energy can help France and other countries to reduce planet-warming emissions, environmental campaigners say it replaces one problem with another.
Photo: Reuters
POLICY MEETINGS
To seek solutions, French President Emmanuel Macron, who has announced plans to build at least six new reactors by 2050, yesterday chaired the first of a series of meetings on nuclear policy to discuss investments and waste recycling.
“We can’t have a responsible nuclear policy without taking into account the handling of used fuel and waste. It’s a subject we can’t sweep under the rug,” a government adviser told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“We have real skills and a real technological advantage, especially over the United States. Russia is the only other country that is able to do what France does in terms of treatment and recycling,” the adviser said.
La Hague is the country’s sole site able to process and partially recycle used nuclear fuel.
France historically has relied on nuclear power for about 70 percent of its energy, although the share is likely to have fallen last year as the nuclear fleet suffered repeated outages.
Since the launch of the site at La Hague in 1976, it has treated nearly 40,000 tonnes of radioactive material and recycled some into nuclear fuel that can be reused. The waste that cannot be recycled is mixed with hardening slices of glass and buried for short-term storage underground.
However, its four existing cooling pools for spent fuel rods and recycled fuel that has been reused risk saturation by 2030, said French power giant EDF, which runs France’s 56-strong fleet of reactors, the world’s second-biggest after the US.
Should saturation happen, France’s reactors would have nowhere to place their spent fuel and would have to shut down — a worst-case scenario that led France’s Court of Audit to designate La Hague as “an important vulnerability point” in 2019.
COOL POOLS
EDF is hurrying to build an extra refrigerated pool at La Hague, at a cost of 1.25 billion euros (US$1.36 billion), to store spent nuclear fuel — a first step before the waste can be treated — but that will not be ready until 2034 at the earliest.
Meanwhile, France’s national agency for managing nuclear waste last month requested approval for a project to store permanently high-level radioactive waste.
The plan, called Cigeo, would involve placing the waste 500m below ground in a clay formation in eastern France.
Construction is expected in 2027 if it is approved. Among those opposed to it are residents of the nearby village of Bure and anti-nuclear campaigners.
Jean-Christophe Varin, deputy director of the La Hague site, said that Orano could be flexible to ensure more recycling is done at the facility and there were “several possible scenarios.”
However, he said they could not be worked on in detail in the absence of a strategic vision.
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