high level radioactives wastes : Andra, National Radioactive Waste Management Agency

The end of the operational phase does not mean the end of the facility, in January 2003, it officially entered its monitoring phase and will be placed under particularly active surveillance for 10 years. Since 1994, short-lived, low- and intermediate-level waste has been sent to the Aube waste disposal facility, which inherits the 25 years of experience acquired by its predecessor, studies on disposal projects for radium-bearing and graphite waste The management for radium-bearing and graphite waste is currently at the investigation stage and constitutes an activity pertaining to the research mission of the Agency. Resulting from the past uses of radioactivity, mostly between the beginning of the 20th century and the 1970s, and also from the remediation of old sites, the waste referred to under the general designation of radium-bearing waste contain a large concentration of radium, no specific management system has yet been defined for that type of waste since no dedicated disposal facility is available.

The so-called graphite waste encompass the different elements generated by the dismantling of gas-graphite reactors GGR implemented by the CEA and EDF from the 1950s to the 1980s, they include mostly.
piles of graphite-column assemblies with generally hexagonal sections; those piles were surrounded by reflector columns ; sheaths consisting of cylindrical graphite shields laid out around the fuel element, pile of graphite blocks at Chinon EDF The GGR reactors are all out of service and their fuel elements have been unloaded, however, pile-ups and reflectors are still present in the reactors, while the sheaths have already been stored at the different operators EDF, CEA or COGEMA. The french National Radiactive Waste Management Agency is responsible for the long-term management of all radioactive watse in France and for the conduct of investigations on its disposal in deep geological formation. Those elements contain carbon 14 and chlorine 36, for example, the latter produced by the activation of impurities, andra is therefore seeking, in co-operation with EDF and the CEA, to develop a specific system adapted to that type of waste.

nuclear energy safety

Both waste categories are slightly radioactive but contain, long-lived radioelements, the concept that is currently being contemplated for both is a subsurface repository excavated in a clay formation at a sufficient depth approximately 15 m to secure consistently the waste away from human beings. Line 1, partitioning and transmutation studies. high level radioactives wastes The fission of a nucleus broken into two new nuclei by the impact of a neutron is a form of transmutation, studies in this area are generally aimed at finding solutions to partition and transmute radioactive elements contained in waste. This means using nuclear reactors, particle accelerators or innovative system to transform long-lived radioactive waste into stable or short-lived isotopes and thus reduce the volume of waste requiring confinement over very long periods of time, line 2.