| I. Materials > The Uranium-Plutonium Chain > Waste Disposal |
The categories of radioactive waste, for which the management is regulated, are determined by the radioactivity, nature, and half-life of the isotopes that they contain. In the past the categories A, B, and C were commonly referred to. These categories such as they are defined by the CNE (see below) do not correspond to actual regulatory categories. In other words, there is no regulatory text that defines categories A, B, and C.
Category A: wastes of low- and medium-activity mainly containing short- or medium-lived beta-gamma emitters and alpha emitters in small quantity (no more than 3.7 GBq/t [0.1 Ci/t] of alpha activity after 300 years).
Category B: wastes of weak and medium activity containing long-lived emitters, mainly alpha emitters, in large quantity (more than 3.7 GBq/t [0.1 Ci/t] of alpha activity, less than 370 GBq/t of beta gamma activity).
Category C: high-activity wastes containing large quantities of fission products, activation products, and actinides. They often generate considerable thermal energy. They are chiefly vitrified wastes. Unreprocessed irradiated fuel is also considered a high-activity waste (without upper limit) [CNE 95].
In 2008 the nuclear industry may still speak of categories A, B, and C, but ASN and Andra refer to a grid, with half life along the top and level of radioactivity up the side. The grid in effect maintains Category A wastes and Category C wastes as defined by the CNE. Category A wastes are now low-activity, short-lived wastes (FAVC) and medium-activity, short-lived wastes (MAVC), sometimes in combination as FMAVC; and Category C wastes are now high-activity wastes (HA), both short- (HAVC) and long-lived (HAVL). Category B wastes are now medium-activity, long-lived wastes (MAVL), composed largely of structural materials from irradiated fuel, materials from treating effluents, and other byproducts of the nuclear industry. Low-activity, long-lived wastes (FAVL) (which split with MAVL the same large box on the grid) consist principally of graphite wastes and wastes with radium.
WASTES OF LOW- AND MEDIUM ACTIVITY WITH SHORT HALF LIVES (CATEGORY A, FAVC and MAVC)
In France Category A wastes are designed to be stored at a surface site. Andra manages two sites: the Centre de stockage de la Manche (La Manche Center, CSM), which is saturated, and the Centre de stockage de l’Aube (CSA), which is currently receiving waste.
The life of each center consists of three phases:
--exploitation, during which the wastes are stored;
--surveillance, during which the radioactivity of the wastes of short- or medium-period decreases, under surveillance;
--“banalisation,” during which the land can be used “normally without restrictions of a radiological nature” [JO 6.ix.89].
In 2003, Andra received authorization for the CSM to enter the initial stage of the surveillance phase, which requires active monitoring and the drawing up and submission of reports..
The fundamental safety rule (RFS) no. I.2 of 19 June 1984 defines “the safety objectives and the design bases for the surface centers intended for the long-term storage” of category A wastes. According to this rule, “the medium-mass activity in alpha emitters for all waste packages [....], calculated at the end of the surveillance phase proposed by the operator [300 years in the case of the CSA and CSM disposal sites] must not exceed 370 MBq per ton [0.01 Ci/t]. Moreover, the maximum mass activity in alpha emitters for each package of waste [...] should as a general rule remain less than 3.7 GBq per ton [0.01 Ci/t] without in any case exceeding 18.5 GBq per ton [0.5 Ci/t].
WASTES OF HIGH ACTIVITY AND LONG-LIVED WASTES OF MEDIUM ACTIVITY) (CATEGORIES C AND B, HA and MAVL)
Highly radioactive waste and moderately radioactive wastes with long-lived emitters are, in 2008, placed in storage awaiting geological disposal [CNE 95]. They are found at the sites where they were created or at several storage centers, particularly the Cedra installation at Cadarache.
Law 91-1381 December 30, 1991, authorized “the study of reversible or irreversible disposal possibilities in deep underground geological formations, in particular by means of underground laboratories.” In mid-1996 Andra submitted to the DSIN a request for authorization to construct and operate three laboratories in the Gard (a granite site) and the Vienne and Haute-Marne/Meuse (clay sites) respectively. In December 1998, the government announced the choice of a clay site at Bure (Meuse) and elimination of candidate sites at Bagnols-sur-Cèze (Gard) and La Chapelle-Baton (Vienne). It affirmed the need for two sites, however, and asked Andra to begin a search for another granite site. The government also indicated that it was insisting on a “logic of reversibility” for the deep-underground site [Reuters 10.xiii.98].
Andra began operating an underground laboratory in a clay formation at Bure (Meuse) in 2004. The government suspended the search for a location to host a granite site because of strong opposition from residents at the areas under consideration.
At the end of 2006 or earlier, the government was to send to Parliament a bill authorizing the creation of a storage center for wastes of high activity and long life [JO 1.i.92]. Logically, one of the laboratories would be chosen. Andra presented a dossier on a site in clay in 2005, but research in the Bure laboratory was not far enough along to allow the government to present a bill authorizing creation of a repository.
The law that was passed, law no. 2006-739 of 28 June 2006 on the sustainable management of radioactive materials and waste, established a program aimed at authorizing a repository in 2015 and putting it into operation, if authorized, in 2025 (Article 3). The demand for authorization of a repository, the law specifies, must concern a geological layer that has been the subject of studies by means of an underground laboratory (Article 12). This stipulation makes it virtually certain that a site near Bure will be the subject of the demand.
The 2006 law requires that the authorization of the repository establish the reversibility of waste disposal for a minimum of one hundred years. Closure of the repository will require passage of another law.
Delivery of the authorization to create the repository is to be the result of a complex process. Andra is to furnish a dossier, which will be the subject of public debate. The Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), a committee that is to report annually on progress on waste disposal (Article 9), and local governments in the affected area will review Andra's request for an authorization. The request will go to a parliamentary committee (Office parlementaire d' évaluation des choix scientifiques et technologiques [OPECST]) with reports from ASN and the committee and with a report of the public debate. The parliamentary committee will then report to the government and the government will present a law establishing reversibility. After passage of the law and the holding of a public inquiry, the Conseil d'Etat can deliver the permit (Article 12).
WASTES WITH RADIUM AND WASTES CONTAINING GRAPHITE (FAVL)
Law 2006-739 on management of nuclear wastes mandates the drawing up of solutions for disposing of wastes contaminated with radium and of graphite wastes (wastes that are said to be weakly radioactive but are long lived) in order that a disposal center for them be put into operation in 2013. The Commission Nationale d'Evaluation (CNE) and Andra's scientific committee pointed out to the government that this date left insufficient time to prepare for a center. As a result the government asked Andra to draw up a plan according to which Andra would seek authorization for the center in 2013 and would put it into operation in 2019.
In June 2008 at the request of the minister of ecology, Jean-Louis Borloo, Andra sent to the mayors in twenty departments in France invitations to present their respective municipalities as candidates for an installation to store radioactive waste that is long lived but "weakly" radioactive. The installation will be constructed at a depth of between 15 and 200 meters underground. Andra selected the twenty departments because they have clay that Andra believes will be a suitable burial medium. The mayors had until the end of October, 2008, to reply.
In a press release dated June 24, 2009 Andra announced that the French government has selected two communities as potential locations for a disposal facility for FAVL wastes: Auxon and Pars-lès-Chavanges in Aube. They were chosen from the forty-two communities that had offered themselves as sites, nine of which withdrew. According to Andra, they are the most promising locations from the point of view of geography, environment, and local support. They will be investigated in 2009 and 2010. Then, after a public debate in 2011, the government anticipates choosing between them. The wastes will be stored at a depth of between fifteen and two hundred meters. The facility is scheduled to open in 2019 [AFP 24.vi.09].
The wastes with radium contain a notable quantity of radium (a long-lived radionuclide) and give off radon. The majority of these wastes were produced by Rhone-Poulenc in treating rare earths [DSIN 99]. They are estimated to have a volume of 35,000 cubic meters (30,000 tons).
The wastes with graphite consist mainly of sleeves and piles of graphite associated with the gas graphite reactors: the G1, G2, and G3 piles at Marcoule; the EDF reactors: Chinon, Bugey, and Saint Laurent-des-Eaux; and the Vandellos-1 reactor in Spain (the fuel from Vandellos was reprocessed at Marcoule and at La Hague). Since at least 2000, Andra has been studying subsurface disposal of these wastes because of their long-lived radionuclides: nickel 63 (half life: 100 years); carbon 14 (half life: 5730 years); and chlorine 36 (half life: 300 000 years) [Rivasi 00]. These wastes have an estimated volume of 100,000 cubic meters (23,000 tons).
The CNE reported in 2008 that generic studies show that radium-bearing wastes can be stored in a sub-surface site. However, the CNE has reservations about storing the graphite wastes in such a site. The subject of the graphite wastes is complex. The character of the wastes needs further study, and the geological characteristics of actual sites need to be known. In the case of graphite, generic studies are insufficient. The Commission recommends that, for the graphite wastes, in parallel to the studies of possible subsurface sites, Andra study the consequences and the supplemental costs of burying the graphite wastes in the deep-underground repository planned for long-lived medium and high-activity wastes [CNE2 08].
WASTE SAID TO BE OF VERY LOW RADIOACTIVITY (TFA)
Substances that in radioactivity are between conventional wastes and 'low-level' radioactive wastes are called wastes of very low radioactivity, TFA. The average radioactivity is estimated to be a dozen Bq/gram [Andra]. The majority of these wastes arise from the dismantling and cleaning of installations and from maintenance. In 2003 Andra opened a disposal facility for short-lived and long-lived solid TFA wastes, the Centre de Stockage de déchets très faiblement radioactifs de Morvilliers, near Soulaines, in Champagne.
French regulations do not set any thresholds of radioactivity below which materials contaminated with radionuclides are exempt from regulation as nuclear materials. The Nuclear Safety Authority has, however, developed a policy of dividing installations into radioactive and nonradioactive zones, based on the history of the particular facility, as a means of determining what materials should be treated as radioactive waste during dismantling operations. Zones are established by the operator with the approval of the Nuclear Safety Authority. Wastes from a radioactive zone are managed according to the category of radioactive waste to which they belong. Wastes from nonradioactive zones are "monitored for the absence of radioactivity" and then managed as conventional materials [ASN 2007].
WASTES WITH TRITIUM
Law 2006-739 of 28 June 2006 stipulates that, for 2008, solutions for storing wastes containing tritium, permitting the reduction of their radioactivity before their disposal at or below the surface, are to be drawn up.
SEALED SOURCES
Law 206-739 also requires that procedures allowing the disposal of used sealed sources in existing or to-be-constructed centers be finalized for 2008..
URANIUM TAILINGS
Uranium tailings are stored where they were produced. In 2008 a report is to be made on the long-term impact of the disposal sites for uranium tailings and the establishment of a plan for reinforced radiological monitoring of these sites.
WASTE WITH REINFORCED NATURAL RADIOACTIVITY (NORM)
By the terms of the law, in 2009 a report is to be made on solutions for managing, over the short- and over the long-term, wastes with reinforced natural radioactivity. The report should, if possible, propose new solutions.
--updated June 26, 2009
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