France seeks strategy for nuclear waste site saturation point risk | – #France #seeks #strategy #nuclear #waste #site #saturation #point #risk
THE HAGUE, FranceFeb 3 (Reuters) – At a nuclear waste site in Normandy, robotic arms controlled by technicians behind protective shields maneuver a tube that will turn radioactive chemicals into glass, as France seeks to secure by-products of its growing trust. about atomic energy.
The fuel cooling pools in The Hague, in the northwest of the country, could be full by the end of the decade, and state-owned Orano, which runs them, says the government needs to define a long-term strategy to modernize its aging facilities. No later than 2025.
While more nuclear power could help France and other countries cut global-warming emissions, environmentalists see one problem with another. substitute they say he did.
Revealing plans to build at least six new reactors by 2050 to seek solutions the president Emmanuel Macron is presiding over the first of a series of meetings on nuclear policy to discuss investment and waste recycling on Friday.
“We cannot have a responsible nuclear policy without considering the management of spent fuel and waste,” a government adviser told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
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“We have real skills and a real technological edge, esp USAfrom Russia It is the only country that can do what France does in terms of treatment and recycling.”
The Hague is the country’s only site capable of processing and partially reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.
France has historically used nuclear power for about 70% of its power, although the share is likely to decline in the past year as its nuclear fleet has experienced repeated outages.
Since the site was commissioned in The Hague in 1976, it has processed about 40,000 tons of radioactive material, turning some of it into reusable nuclear fuel. Non-recyclable waste is mixed with hardened glass shards and buried underground for short-term storage.
Four existing cooling pools for spent fuel rods and reprocessed fuel risk saturation by 2030, according to French energy giant EDF ( EDF.PA ), which operates France’s 56-strong reactor fleet. United States of America.
If saturation were to occur, France’s reactors would have nowhere to put their spent fuel and would have to shut down — a worst-case scenario that led France’s Court of Audit to designate The Hague as a “significant point of vulnerability” in 2019.
COOL POOLS AND DEEP CLAY
1.25 in EDF La Hague billion euro (1.37 billion dollars) is rushing to build an additional cooling pool to store spent nuclear fuel — a first step before cleaning up the waste — but it won’t be ready until 2034. the earliest.
Meanwhile, on France’s nuclear waste management national The agency last month sought approval for a project to permanently store high-level radioactive waste.
The plan, called Cigéo, involves placing the waste 500 meters (1,640 feet) underground in a clay formation in eastern France.
If approved, construction is expected in 2027. Those opposed include residents of the nearby village of Bure and anti-nuclear campaigners.
Jean-Christophe Varin, deputy director of the La Hague site, told Reuters Orano could be flexible to ensure more recycling at the facility and there were “several possible scenarios”.
However, he said that it is impossible to work on them in detail because there is no strategic vision. Orano, which accounts for 95% of EDF’s recycling business, says it needs clear guidance from the government no later than 2025 to give time to plan the necessary investments.
Costs are likely to be high. Just keeping up with current operations in The Hague costs around €300 million a year.
Options being considered by EDF and Orano include finding a way to recycle spent fuel more than once, but critics say reprocessing itself creates more radioactive waste and is a long-term solution. way they say it is not. For now, the backup plan is to put more fuel tanks into the existing pools.
After about seven years of cooling in the pool, the spent nuclear fuel is separated into non-recyclable residues, which are converted into glass (4% of the material), plutonium (1%), and a new nuclear fuel called MOX. About 40% of France’s reactors are operational and can recycle uranium (95%).
In the past, uranium was sent to Russia for re-enrichment and return for use in some EDF reactors, but EDF stopped doing so in 2013 because it was too expensive.
Many in the West Russia EDF will continue to ship uranium to Russia this year, the only country that can process it, despite the war in Ukraine, which has caused it to avoid doing business with. He declined to confirm to Reuters that he would do so.
With its 1980s buildings and Star Wars-style control rooms, the facility in The Hague has its limitations.
“If we were to process large amounts of MOX fuel, the facility today is not equipped for that,” Varin said. “The technology for multi-cycle recycling is not the same, so upgrading or replacing facilities” would require “significant” investments, he said.
($1 = 0.9098 euros)
Reporting by Benjamin Mallet, additions by America Hernandez report and writing, edited by Silvia Aloisi, Edmund Blair, and Barbara Lewis
Our standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
2023-02-03 15:14:36
Source – reuters
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