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Wastes from reprocessing foreign spent fuel at La Hague (1994)

Author	Mycle Schneider
Date	1994
Classification	2.02.8.10/03 (FRANCE - LA HAGUE - GENERAL)
Front

1. REPROCESSING CONTRACTS WITH FOREIGN UTILITIES

1.1 Three Series of Contracts with Foreign Utilities

At the beginning of the 1970s, the CEA (1) signed a first series of reprocessing 
contracts with foreign electric utilities. This was a remarkable exploit since the 
contracts pertained to spent fuel from Light Water Reactors (LWRs) with which 
France had had zero experience at that time. Following its startup in 1966, the UP2 
facility had reprocessed fuel only from gas-graphite reactors and, in dilution with 
these, fuel from the Phénix breeder reactor at Marcoule. The processing head-end 
for LWR spent fuel wasn't completed until 1976.
This first series of contracts covered the reprocessing of 525 metric tons (tonnes 
or te) of spent fuel. These contracts contained no provisions for the return of the 
wastes that would be generated. At the same time, according to Cogema, (2) later 
discussions introduced "certain clauses for the return of wastes" for 231 of the 
525 tonnes of fuel. (3)

The creation of Cogema as a private corporation in 1976 led to the transfer of 
reprocessing activities from CEA to Cogema in 1978. The UP2 reprocessing plant at 
La Hague, (4) financed equally by CEA's civilian and military budgets, became part 
of Cogema's birthright. From the start, UP2 was conceived as a facility for the 
reprocessing of gas-graphite fuel. Then, after the "war of the reactor models," (5) 
Cogema added a head-end facility for High Level Oxides (HAO) which would 
reprocess fuel from LWRs. From the beginning UP2-HAO or UP2-400 was to have a 
"nominal capacity" of 800 tonnes per year. (6) But this value was revised downward 
a number of times to 400 te/y and then to 250 te/y (by the Castaing Commission) 
before being established at 400 te/y. It would be 11 years before UP2 would attain 
even this "nominal" performance, and it would attain this level only once again (in 
1989). Following its startup, UP2 has had a lifetime capacity factor (based on its 
"nominal capacity" of 400 tonnes per year) of 55%.

1 Commissariat à l'energie atomique.
2 Compagnie générale des matières nucléaires, a 100% subsidiary of CEA-Industrie.
3 Letter from the Direction of Cogema-La Hague to the Commission of 
Information, dated 12 December 1990.
4 UP1 (Usine de Plutonium 1), Marcoule, is the plant for reprocessing of military 
and civilian fuel from gas-graphite reactors and the fuel blankets from the Phénix 
breeder reactor.
5 The ''French reactor model," developed by CEA, was the graphite-gas reactor 
typified by Chinon A and St. Laurent-des-Eaux A. EDF finally imposed upon the 
industry the American model of Pressurized Water Reactor of the Westinghouse 
type. Until the mid-1980s, Framatome constructed its reactors under a 
Westinghouse license.
6 HAO "entered into service at the end of 1975 and attained its nominal capacity of 
800 te of oxides per year around 1979-1980" Révue Générale Nucléaire, Jan-Feb 
1976, p. 52). HAO would never attain this "nominal capacity."

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