E.D.F. This is just one of the many operations required to keep La Hague, the centerpiece of France's spent fuel management system, running smoothly, despite its ageing and the risk of its cooling pools becoming saturated.
The future of the processing-recycling sector is one of the major issues surrounding the planned construction of new nuclear reactors in France. On Friday, the subject will be discussed at a Nuclear Policy Council chaired by Emmanuel Macron, according to the Elysée Palace.
The country "cannot have a responsible nuclear policy without dealing with fuel and waste management, a subject that cannot be swept under the carpet", said a government adviser interviewed by Reuters.
"We have real skills and a real technological lead, particularly over the United States. Russia is the only other country capable of doing the same thing as France in terms of treatment-recycling," adds this source.
As far as the storage of non-recyclable materials is concerned, the Cigéo project at Bure (Meuse and Haute-Marne) will have to be adapted, as it will not begin to receive the most radioactive French waste until the 2080s.
To invest in the renewal of its plants, which will reach 50 years of operation in the 2030s, or even build new ones, Orano is asking for visibility on the French government's plans beyond 2040, after which the continuation of French treatment-recycling is not assured.
ORANO WANTS TO PLEAD ITS CASE
The former Areva is defending the continuation of the process, which it stresses saves natural uranium and reduces the volume of waste to be stored.
The group intends to enter into discussions with the French government in the coming months, with a view to obtaining decisions as early as 2025 on the planning and launch of major projects, some of which could take up to 15 years to complete.
"Orano is ready to make proposals to help in this decision-making process. We're working on scenarios for the La Hague plant post-2040. There are several possible scenarios, but they cannot be worked out in detail and can only be refined if we have a somewhat strategic vision," Jean-Christophe Varin, deputy director of La Hague, told Reuters.
At La Hague, on this mid-January day, snowfall reinforces the impression of a site isolated from the rest of the world. On the horizon, the cliffs at the tip of the Cotentin peninsula plunge more than 100 metres into the English Channel. In the distance, you can make out the EDF power plant in Flamanville and its EPR reactor.
With its austere buildings and control rooms straight out of a Star Wars episode, the site is more reminiscent of the 1980s than a state-of-the-art nuclear power plant.
Without its four storage pools, where spent fuel is cooled before being processed to extract reusable materials and waste, the country's 56 reactors would be unable to evacuate and replace the uranium assemblies that keep them running.
RISK OF SATURATION
In a worst-case scenario in which spent fuel evacuations to La Hague are halted, the storage facilities at the power plants would be full after twelve months, and the reactors would have to shut down. This led the French Court of Auditors in 2019 to describe the site as a "major point of vulnerability in the current operation of the cycle".
La Hague's pools are likely to be saturated by 2030. EDF, which accounts for over 95% of Orano's recycling business, is planning to build a new one at a cost of 1.25 billion euros. However, the facility is not scheduled to be operational until 2034, which means that the number of fuel assemblies in the existing basins will have to be increased in the meantime.
The risk of saturation stems from the fact that the French nuclear "cycle" currently allows only one reuse of reprocessed fuel, namely Mox - manufactured at the Orano Melox plant in Marcoule (Gard) - and enriched reprocessed uranium, which involves the return of materials to Russia.
Further recycling is not envisaged before the second half of the century. In the meantime, these fuels will fill Orano's pools, where each year more material is stored than retrieved.
"THE ENVELOPE DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU WANT TO DO".
"If we were to process large quantities of Mox fuel, the plant is not suitable today," stresses La Hague's deputy director.
Jean-Christophe Varin refers to the potential need for "substantial" new investment at the site, but refuses to give an order of magnitude.
"The amount depends on what you want to do. For mono-recycling, you can use existing technological building blocks. For multi-recycling, the technological building blocks are not the same, so the stakes of modernizing or even replacing installations are not the same."
In the short term, the first challenge is to guarantee the operation of the Orano La Hague site until 2040. For the period 2015-2025 alone, it will have required nearly 300 million euros of investment per year. (With America Hernandez, edited by Matthieu Protard)
