By Nancy Spring, Senior Editor
Located in northwest France, Areva’s La Hague is the largest nuclear fuel reprocessing/recycling plant in the world. Spent fuel from 90 to 100 nuclear reactors can be recycled there each year, separated into uranium, plutonium and fission products, each one bound for the next use or final storage.
Right now, 40 years of France’s nuclear waste is stored in three storage halls at La Hague—9,500 containers containing vitrified nuclear waste in pits that are 20 meters deep. The containers can be stored here for 100 years, but must be moved to a final repository eventually.
This photo, shot during a tour I made in April of some of Areva’s French nuclear facilities, was taken in one of the storage halls. I stood right on top of one of the nuclear waste pits.
 Inside a storage hall for vitrified waste at Areva’s La Hague plant in France. Photo, P.E./Nancy Spring |
Areva invited 10 journalists for the tour. We saw large component manufacturing, enrichment and mixed oxide (MOX) fabrication facilities and the new EPR construction at Flamanville, but for me the most memorable moment was standing in this room where nuclear waste is stored.
Fuel assemblies power nuclear reactors for three to five years before they have to be replaced. Ninety-six percent of each fuel assembly is re-useable, so after a year in storage ponds at the reactor site, they are shipped to La Hague to be recycled.
At La Hague, the fuel assemblies are put in “baskets” and moved to an interim storage pool for another cooling down period of three to five years. There are four pools at La Hague, each one with a maximum fuel holding capacity of about 3,000 metric tons or approximately 700 baskets.
After the second cool-down period, the spent fuel assemblies are cut into 35-mm chunks and the plutonium and uranium are separated from the fission products. The uranium is used for UOX fuel and the plutonium goes to Areva’s Melox plant to be made into MOX fuel. The other 4 percent comprises the fission products, which are highly radioactive and thermally charged. They are vitrified and poured into stainless steel containers, ready for waste storage in ventilated pits such as those in my photo.
It’s possible, if we overcome our fear of recycling in the U.S., that we will be able to solve the problem in a similar manner.
In ballpark figures, it takes approximately 30 metric tons of fuel each year to power a 1,000 MW nuclear power plant, which creates 20 tons of waste. By recycling, the volume of waste is reduced by a factor of five and plutonium is removed from the final waste stream. Radiotoxicity is reduced by a factor of 10.
The lower the volume of waste, the lower its toxicity, explained Rémi Coulon, back-end sector, strategy and international projects director, for Areva, during a conference for the journalists at Areva’s Paris headquarters. Mr. Coulon oversees downstream decommissioning and recycling for the company.
He said there is no comparison to what was done in the military and there has been an evolution of technologies for recycling. “People have the wrong image (of reprocessing). Maybe the burden is on us to educate them.”
Granted, nuclear is a way of electrical life in France. Nuclear power provides 80 percent of France’s electricity. One Areva EPR is under construction in Flamanville and the president of France just announced plans for another. And no, the French have not built a final repository yet. Mr. Coulon said there is a timetable where a license would be granted by 2015 for the repository under consideration in eastern France and it would be opened by 2025. (And he said that is “not part of Areva’s business.”)
But when it comes to spent fuel recycling and waste treatment, we could hardly find a better model. With Yucca Mountain apparently off the table and 118 operating and shut-down reactors in the U.S. with waste issues, perhaps it’s time for some of our decision makers to take a tour like I did.