RHONE-ALPES

Purpose: theoretical and applied research

Type: center that is officially civilian but had military aspects

Installations: pilots and laboratories, reactors, storage of waste

Location: a 64-hectare site, 2 km northwest of the center of the city of Grenoble (Isère)

Operator: Commissariat à l’énergie atomique

Period of operation: since 1956

Nuclear materials handled: plutonium, uranium, lithium, tritium, deuterium, thorium

The CEA is denuclearizing the site through its "Passage" project, a process that the CEA began in 2002 and plans to complete in 2012.  The main areas of competence today are new energy technologies, micro and nanotechnologies, biotechnologies, and basic research generating innovative ideas [CEAGren 07].  

The main installations relating to the fuel chain have included:

LCAC, which operated from 1968 to 1982, analyzed thorium and uranium compounds , fission product solutions and transuranics. Dismantling to level 3 was completed in 1995 [CEAD 93, 98].

This laboratory studied irradiated uranium- and plutonium-based fuel (particularly from research reactors) and structural materials from reactors. It entered into operation in 1968 or earlier, and ceased experimentation at the end of 2002 [Andra 07].  The laboratory included a "high activity" part and a "very high activity" part named the Laboratoire de très haute activité (THA). The "high activity" part was composed of six cells shielded with lead, and the "very high activity" part of a chain of six enclosures in concrete [DSIN 99]. 

According to a CEA document, Lama included a furnace for melting sodium, which was to receive sodium from Siloé [CEAPr 29.iv.99]. However, articles in the press said that 50 kg of sodium that cooled would be sent to an installation called Aténa at Marcoule for destruction [LeMo 25.vi.99; Echo 3.v.99].  As of 2004, 4 kg of sodium-potassium contaminated with activation and fission products, were stored at Lama [Andra 06].

In 2007 the hot laboratories 1 and 2 were dismantled and the removal of samples of fuel that had been sent to Lama for study was completed [CEAGren 07]. Pégase at Cadarache, INB 22, has received fuel samples from Lama.

The wastes have included 92 t of lead and scrap metal that the center gave to the company Radiacontrôle in the winter of 1992/93 for decontamination in its establishment at Pierrelatte. They had a radioactivity of 1.5 thousand Bq. The Center accepted certificates from Radiacontrôle without proof of the destination of the wastes. Later, authorities learned that the decontamination operation of Radiacontrôle did not meet regulations.

June 27, 1997, during Euratom monitoring, the CEA discovered that an irradiated Mox fuel element that was listed in computerized records as in storage at Lama, was, in fact, missing [Con iii.99]. The missing rod has not been found. DSIN stated that it was probably sent to the Centre de la Manche in one of many concrete containers holding radioactive waste [DSIN 99].

A periodical presenting the center suggested, in 1988, the importance of the work carried on: "Since 1960, the chemical engineering section at Grenoble has mainly developed procedures for isotopic separation, thanks to competencies in chemical engineering and in electrochemistry:

--Studies on lithium . . . bore fruit at the industrial level with the construction of the Miramas plant; they continue with the search for new processes.

--Studies of uranium exclusively concerned isotopic enrichment

--by gaseous diffusion (into 1971);

--by ultracentrifugation (from 1963 to 1969);

--by chemical treatments . . .

--by the laser process with the development (from 1979 to 1982) of a uranium vapor furnace.

--Studies on the isotopes of hydrogen which began with the development of processes for the production of heavy water from 1967 to 1973, continue at present with the French production of deuterium . . . " [CEAG 88].

Projects of the chemical engineering section included the PC4 Pilote de caractéristiques pour l’enrichissement de l’uranium par diffusion gazeuse; and Pilotes PL4, PL8, and PL81 for the enrichment of uranium by chemical treatment (Chemex). PL81 was in operation in 1987-88 [NucF 26.i.87; CEARa 88]. The Chemex installations seem to have been located in an INB-S (a secret basic nuclear installation) responsible to the ministry of industry and within the perimeter of the Grenoble center [Andra 99]. Dismantling of the INB-S was underway in 1999, according to Andra [00]. (On waste, see below.)

Purpose: fundamental and applied research and the production of radioelements

Type: pool with open core

Period of operation: 1963-1997

Power: 35 MW thermal

Fuel: plates with uranium enriched to 93%; then silicide fuel

Moderator and coolant: light water  

Siloé used uranium/aluminum fuel with highly enriched uranium (minimal critical mass: 5.5 kg); but in 1996 Siloé was reportedly loaded with silicide fuel with 5-6 g of uranium per cm3, enriched to less than 20% [NucF 9.ix.96].

All MTR uranium-aluminum fuel from Siloé in storage at Grenoble as of 1995 was reprocessed at Marcoule in 1996 [CEAD 96; CEAD 98]. The Purex process in use at La Hague cannot reprocess silicide fuel [CEAD 98]. A CEA press dossier indicates that fuel that was at Siloé in 1999 was to be shipped to Pégase and Cascad (INB 22) at Cadarache for storage [CEAPr 29.4.99]. 

A fission products laboratory and a hot cell are associated with Siloé [Con vi.97].

Irradiation tests have been transferred from Siloé to Osiris at Saclay. Basic research performed in Siloé is being continued at Orphée at Saclay and RHF at Grenoble [LeMo 28.vi.99].

Siloé ceased operating in 1997.  Cleanup was scheduled to last through 2003; dismantling to level 2 or to level 3 apart from civil engineering was to take place from 2004 to 2007 [CEAD 98, 99].  In 2007 dismantling was underway [CEAGren 07].

Purpose: mainly training of personnel

Type: critical model of Siloé

Period of operation: 1964-2002

Power: 100 kW thermal

Fuel: plates with uranium enriched to 93% (minimal critical mass of 3.9 kg)

A portion of the fuel was reprocessed in the United States and perhaps also at Eurochemic in Belgium, but in 1992 old cores remained [CEARa 65 and 66].

Siloette, which trained staff for EDF’s reactors, ceased operation in 2002 and has been dismantled and cleansed.  In August 2007, Siloette was removed from the list of INBs. The building is now considered to be an ordinary industrial structure [CEAGren 07].

Purpose: fundamental and technological research and radiography

Type: pool with open core

Period of operation: 1958-1988

Power: 1 MW thermal, raised to 8 MW thermal in 1971

Fuel: plates with uranium enriched to 93%

Mélusine tested materials, served as a tool for basic research, produced radioelements, and conducted analyses by activation [CEAGren 07].  

In 1994 the CEA received authorization to begin final shutdown operations. Dismantling to level 2 or 3 apart from civil engineering was scheduled to begin in 2001 and to last until 2004 [CEAD 98]. Final cleansing began in 2007 [CEAGren 07]. Andra has estimated that the dismantling will produce 8 m3 of concrete and 140 m3 of scrap metal with contamination greater than 100 Bq/g and 3m3 of concrete, 60 m3 of scrap metal, and 20 m3 of various other waste with activity of less than 100 Bq/g [Andra 99].

WASTES

Operated since the fifties or sixties, INB 36 received, treated, and stored liquid effluents and solids from Grenoble, the Laue-Langevin Institute, and perhaps also from "certain other laboratories in the city" [CEAD 93]. The installations included a compactor, one or two incinerators, an evaporator, and an installation for coating sludges in bitumen.  As of 2000 the CEA evacuated certain of the aqueous liquid effluents from the Cen to Cadarache or Saclay to be treated; and it no longer treated the liquid effluents of the Institute [DSIN 00]. In 2007 the CEA sent aqueous liquid effluents from the Cen to Cadarache or Marcoule for treatment and the organic effluents to an installation such as Centraco [CEAGren 07].

An incinerator burned solid wastes and organic liquid wastes that were "weakly" radioactive.  The incineration of PVC was forbidden.  The solid wastes of "low and medium activity [were] either incinerated, or compacted."  They were then coated or blocked in cement [DSIN 00].

A chemical reactor, which treated sodium-potassium by hydrolysis, was also located on the site of the Sted [CeaPr 29.iv.99; Con.xii.98].  Reportedly it destroyed the sodium-potassium from experiments in Siloé [Echo 3.v.99].  The removal from storage and the neutralization of simple-geometry sodium (97% of the initial sodium in terms of radioactivity) was carried out in 2007. The complex-geometry sodium and the NaK remain to be dealt with.  A CEA report on the center states that the hydrolysis of the sodium and sodium-potassium occurs in the ICPE BO33 at the Cen [CEAGren 07].  

The Sted was designated as a "pilot unit" to define the modalities of dispatching wastes from the CEA to Centraco:  "creation of a new type of package, repackaging and characterization of stored wastes, taking account of rules for acceptance at Centraco [...]" [CEAD 99].  

INB 36 entered the shut-down phase in 2004 [ASNWeb 3.i.09]; but the north part of the installation is still used for characterizing and grouping wastes awaiting evacuation from the center.  In 2007 the south part awaited dismantling [CEAGren 07].  

The installation contains pits in which wastes are stored.  As of 2007, containers of highly radioactive wastes were in the process of being removed from the pits and sent to the Sted at Cadarache (INB 37, the Station de Traitement des Déchets Solides) [CEAGren 07].  

The authorization for gaseous releases, published in the Journal Officiel 23 April 1995, permits the release of 10 TBq per year of gases other than tritium, 20 Bq of tritium, 3 GBq of halogens, and 0.3 GBq of aerosols.

The authorization for liquid releases, published at the same time, permits releases of 1 GBq for radioelements other than tritium, 100 MBq for alpha emitters and 500 GBq for tritium.

SOLID WASTES

Solid wastes include suspect waste essentially from cleanup and dismantling.

The wastes from the dismantling of the Chemex units were evacuated, according to their activity and their level of mercury, to the Saint-Quentin dump, Jean-Perrin (Isère); to the Bellegarde dump (Gard); to the Aciéries du Haut-Languedoc; to Socrati, for decontamination to less than 1 Bq/g, then Ascometal (Fos-sur-Mer); and to Pierrelatte to be taken in charge. The wastes at less than 100 Bq/g but more than 10 Bq/g alpha and less than 10 ppm mercury (rubble) were, in 1991, "awaiting a decision in favor of Andra or of Lodève" [Lallement 91].

--last visited January 4, 2009

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