BASSE-NORMANDIE- LOWER NORMANDY LA HAGUE III. RETURN OF WASTE FROM THE REPROCESSING OF FOREIGN FUEL In its Traitement
des combustibles usés provenant de l’étranger, Rapport 2008
(Reprocessing of used foreign-origin fuel, 2008 Report), Areva states that
by the end of 2008 it had returned to the countries who signed reprocessing
contracts before June 2006, 83% of the containers of vitrified fission
products arising from the reprocessing of the fuel. The company also states
that it is returning containers of compacted structural waste (hulls and end
pieces), though it does not give a percentage of existing hulls and end
pieces already returned. Seven
thousand containers of compacted waste remain to be sent, Areva says.
The lack of a percentage may reflect the fact that, as indicated in
the section on products of reprocessing, some of the structural waste
produced at La Hague is still stored in bulk under water and other
structural waste produced prior to 1995 was conditioned in cement rather
than compacted. Intergovernmental
agreements specifying when waste is to be returned are required in
conjunction with reprocessing contracts signed since the passage of the June
2006 nuclear waste program management act, known as the Birraux Act.
The
French disagree among themselves as to what constitutes waste, however.
Areva asserts in its 2008 report
that wastes from the operation and dismantling of the reprocessing plant do
not fall under the obligation to return foreign waste.
In this the company is stating French government policy. Article 3 of
the December 1991 law on the management of nuclear waste contains a
prohibition on foreign nuclear waste’s remaining in France.
This stipulation was superseded by Article 8 of the June 2006 nuclear
waste program manage act, which forbids the disposal of foreign-origin waste
in France but does not spell out the details.
A decree of March 3, 2008, implements the prohibition in the June
2006 act in a way that has created controversy.
France must send back waste
equivalent in mass and radioactivity to the waste produced by reprocessing,
but need not consider in its calculations so-called usable materials (the
plutonium and the uranium separated by reprocessing), authorized radioactive
releases from the plant, wastes produced by operating and maintaining the
reprocessing facility such as contaminated gloves and tools, and
decommissioning waste. Greenpeace filed a request for
annulment of the March 3 decree with the Conseil d’Etat, France’s
highest administrative court. In
the challenge, filed in 2008, Greenpeace states that the 2006 act requires
that all foreign “waste” be returned and, that the national radioactive
waste management agency, Andra, lists materials produced by the operation of
the reprocessing plants as “waste.”
In support of its request
Greenpeace shows that the process and decommissioning waste from the
reprocessing of foreign spent fuel, though not categorized as highly
radioactive, are not trivial. According
to a calculation by WISE-Paris, these wastes already amount to nearly 20,000
metric tons of material in almost 50,000 packages stored at La Hague and at
the shut-down UP-1 reprocessing plant at Marcoule. The Conseil d’Etat may not rule
on the challenge for years. Greenpeace
did not file for an injunction so its action had no immediate effect [NucF,
19.v.08]. Returning waste other than vitrified high-activity waste and compacted structural waste, which is of intermediate activity and long life, would raise a variety of problems. Among them is the fact that between the creation of La Hague and 1990, wastes described as being of “weak” activity were packaged in STE2 without prior sorting and sent to CSM--about 6000 m3 per year. At CSM a part was compacted and all were buried, actions that made the return of these wastes to the countries that produced them almost impossible [WISE 94b]. --updated 5 October 2009
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