Anticipate storage needs and improve the management of radioactive waste… This is the ambition of the five-yearly publication of the National Inventory of radioactive materials and waste published by Andrea, this Tuesday, December 12. And this management is proving ever more consistent: France has around 220,000 m3 more than on December 31, 2016, according to this report at the end of 2021.
14% more radioactive waste to manage
France has some 1.76 million m3 of radioactive waste to manage, or 14% more than during the previous inventory, underlines the agency. More than 90% of the total is of very low activity or of low and medium activity with a short life. These materials are partly stored on the surface in Andra centers in Aube.
The rest of the stock is made up of long-lived low-level waste (103,000 m3), long-lived medium-level waste (39,500 m3) and last but not least 4,320 m3 of high-activity waste.
The latter in fact form almost all (97.2%) of the radioactivity recorded in the waste with levels of several billion becquerels per gram. They come from nuclear electricity production (more than 90%), associated research activities and Defense.
Radioactive for up to several hundred thousand years, they must be buried in a deep underground site currently being prepared in the Meuse (Cigeo project). These volumes do not, however, include what France considers to be “materials” and not “waste”: in this case spent fuel elements which could one day be reused in potential “4th generation” reactors if these needed to be worked out.
1,000 sites with radioactive materials or waste
According to Andra, spent fuel awaiting reprocessing represents some 14,500 tonnes of heavy metal, uranium resulting from the reprocessing of spent fuel 34,200 tonnes… France also lists more than 300,000 tonnes of depleted uranium.
This assessment also does not take into account waste subject to “specific” management methods: uranium ore residues (stored on former mining sites), or waste “in a historical situation” such as those submerged at sea at a time when this was accepted. In total, France has nearly 1,000 sites where radioactive materials and waste are located at the end of 2021, specifies the inventory.