The lifespan of the two nuclear fuel recycling plants, located in La Hague (Manche) and Marcoule (Gard), will be extended “beyond 2040”, the Minister of the Economy announced on Thursday March 7 and finance, Bruno Le Maire.
Studies will also be launched with a view to starting construction on a MOX-type recycled fuel plant, at an unspecified deadline, and a new reprocessing site by 2045-2050, added the minister. , who was speaking as part of a visit to the Orano site in La Hague, accompanied by the Minister of Industry and Energy, Roland Lescure.
“Our objective is obviously to guarantee the reuse of reprocessed fuels in French reactors to strengthen our sovereignty and reduce uranium imports,” declared Bruno Le Maire. “This will allow us to ultimately reduce uranium consumption in France by 25%, (…) to reduce the volume of final waste by around 75%, which is good for the environment, and that will obviously lead to the creation of thousands of qualified jobs in France,” he underlined, without specifying the amount of the planned investments.
A nuclear policy council chaired by Emmanuel Macron validated on February 26 the continuation of this reprocessing strategy until at least 2100, in the context of EDF’s project to build six new EPR2 reactors in France.
Visibility
The Orano plant in La Hague, a centerpiece of French spent fuel management, is today faced with the aging of its installations. To invest in the renewal of its factories which will reach fifty years of operation during the 2030 decade, or even build new ones, Orano requested visibility on the State’s projects beyond 2040, the date after which the continuation of French treatment-recycling was not assured.
The former Areva argues that the process saves natural uranium and reduces the volumes of waste to be stored. The French nuclear “cycle”, however, currently only allows one reuse of fuels resulting from reprocessing, namely MOX, currently manufactured in the Orano Melox plant in Marcoule, and enriched reprocessing uranium, which involves moving materials back and forth with Russia.
The La Hague plant notably has four storage pools, allowing used fuels to be cooled before processing them to extract reusable materials and waste, which face a risk of saturation. EDF, which represents more than 95% of Orano’s recycling activity, is therefore planning to build a new one, for an amount of 1.25 billion euros, which would be put into service in 2034.