Nuclear fuel cycle in France

These operations include ore extraction, uranium concentration, conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication, irradiation in reactors, recycling, and waste management.

On May 9, 2011, the ASN requested that an additional study be carried out within a year, taking into account the lessons learned from the Fukushima nuclear accident, particularly about deactivation pools and a downward revision of annual production.

[1] This cycle can be open, whereby spent fuel irradiated in reactors undergoes no further treatment and is sent to storage sites of varying design depending on the country, as is the case in Sweden and the United States.

[5] Uranium mining in France began immediately after the Second World War, with the creation of the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique (Atomic Energy Commission) by General de Gaulle on October 18, 1945.

[9] Ore from magmatic rocks results from the migration and precipitation of granitic magma solutions into the earth's upper crust along zones of disturbance.

[14] Three other private mine operators have existed in France: Société Industrielle et Minière de l'Uranium (SIMURA), which exploited deposits in the Bonote region near Pontivy (Morbihan); Compagnie Française des Minerais d'Uranium (CFMU) in Lozère; and Société Centrale de l'Uranium et des Minerais Radioactifs (SCUMRA), which operated the Saint-Pierre deposit in the Cantal region.

Its supply strategy, through its main operator EDF, is based on diversification of sources, both geographically, with materials from deposits in Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan, or Africa, and in terms of suppliers.

In line with the conclusions of the Roussely report on the future of the French nuclear industry, published by the Élysée Palace in June 2010,[19] in February 2011 EDF examined the possibility of becoming a reference shareholder in Areva's mining division.

[20] Orano, which has been present in Mongolia for 25 years, is carrying out a pilot on-site test from July 2021 to December 2022 to extract uranium from the Zuuvch Ovoo deposit, in partnership with the Mongolian state-owned company Mon-Atom.

The actual conversion consists of precipitating the uranyl nitrate with ammonia gas to obtain ammonium diuranate (NH4)2U2O7 (UAN), which is then calcined at around 400°C to produce UO3.

To operate the Georges Besse plant (Eurodif) at its full production capacity of 10.8 million SWU per year, three of the four 900 MWe EDF reactors at the Tricastin site need to be mobilized.

For reasons of economics, reliability, and speed of implementation, Areva opted for centrifugation, acquiring the technology from its European competitor Urenco.

To facilitate storage, the hexafluoride must be defluorinated, after which it is transformed into stable triuranium octaoxide known as “depleted U3O8.” This operation is carried out at Areva NC's plant W on the Tricastin site.

[35] This depleted uranium can either be used in the manufacture of Mox at the Melox plant in Marcoule (around 100 tons per year) or be re-enriched and used in the composition of conventional fuel assemblies.

[38] Uranium oxide pellets are manufactured at the Areva subsidiary Franco-Belge de Fabrication du Combustible (FBFC) plant on the Romans nuclear site.

The pellets are then fired in a sintering furnace at 1,700°C, in a reducing atmosphere containing hydrogen, machined to adjust their shape and facilitate insertion into the sheaths, and finally tested.

These pools have a characteristic blue color due to flashes resulting from the emission of certain faster-than-light beta electrons into the water; this phenomenon is known as the Vavilov-Cherenkov effect.

[55] The La Hague reprocessing plant receives fuel assemblies from various nuclear reactors and transforms them using a variety of processes to isolate the materials that can be reused in the fuel, such as uranium or plutonium, from materials containing fission products emitting beta and gamma rays and minor actinides (neptunium, americium, and curium), which are treated as waste and undergo specific conditioning before final storage.

The pieces of metal structure (cladding, shells), insoluble in the acid, are evacuated by a bucket wheel to a conditioning unit, to be treated as “type B” waste.

In a set of mixer settlers and pulsed columns, a solvent (tributylphosphate) carries away the heavy elements (uranium and plutonium) without extracting the fission products.

The uranium solutions are then concentrated by evaporation into liquid form, to obtain uranyl nitrate, which can then be stored for processing in a specialized plant at the Tricastin nuclear site.

In 2022, Bernard Doroszczuk, Chairman of the French Nuclear Safety Authority, called for “a major overhaul of Orano's aging fuel cycle processing facilities.”[63] Areva NC's TU 5 plant at the Tricastin nuclear site, authorized by decree on July 7, 1992,[64] and commissioned in 1996, converts uranyl nitrate from irradiated fuel processed at Areva's La Hague plant into uranium tetrafluoride (UF4) or double salt (UF4 NH4 F), then oxidizes to uranium sesquioxide (U3O8).

[67] In Areva's 2009 reference report, for example, we read: “Recycling (or closed cycle) takes into account the fact that spent fuel contains a significant quantity of reusable material capable of producing a large amount of energy.

It had to wait for the Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Choices to hear from EDF, ASN, IRSN, CEA, and Areva officials on this subject, and above all for the publication in July 2010 of the opinion of the French High Committee for Transparency and Information on Nuclear Safety (HCTISN) on the transparency of the management of nuclear materials and waste produced at the various stages of the fuel cycle,[69] to find out the true flows of materials and waste, and therefore the rates of reprocessing and recycling.

[78] These are mainly objects and tools used in the operation of nuclear facilities that have been contaminated to a greater or lesser extent by the radioelements with which they have come into contact (protective clothing, gloves, etc.

So, even if the future storage center has to be vast in size, as there have to be spaces between the containers of waste that generate heat due to its high radioactivity, the overall footprint will remain limited.

Since the main enemy is water, which is liable to attack the steel of the containers and then the glass, a geological layer with very low permeability will be chosen.

It, therefore, requests that a new study be produced within a year, taking into account the greater variability of nuclear power generation (400 ± 40 TWh), and in particular a situation of lower and longer-lasting consumption.

[82] IRSN also considers that the overall capacity available in spent fuel storage pools at EDF reactors and AREVA's La Hague facility is low, and could prove insufficient by 2017-2019.

[81] ASN considers that it is essential to learn the lessons from the Fukushima nuclear accident, and in particular that special attention must be paid to spent fuel storage pools.