ASN Annual report 2024

The “nuclear fuel cycle” begins with the extraction of uranium ore and ends with the packaging of the radioactive wastes from spent fuel reprocessing, for subsequent disposal. In France, the last uranium mines closed in the year 2000, so the “fuel cycle” concerns the fabrication of fuel, its reprocessing after use in the nuclear reactors, the reuse of any products resulting from reprocessing that can be recycled, and waste management. The nuclear facilities involved in the “fuel cycle”, each of which is unique, are the links in a chain, the operation of which can be significantly disrupted if one of the links is defective. The licensees of the “fuel cycle” plants are part of the Orano or EDF (Framatome) groups: Orano Cycle operates the Melox plant in Marcoule, the La Hague plants, all the Tricastin plants, as well as the Malvési facilities. Framatome operates the facilities on the Romanssur-Isère site. The French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) monitors the safety of these industrial facilities, which handle radioactive substances such as uranium or plutonium and constitute specific safety risks, notably radiological risks associated with toxic risks. ASN also oversees the overall consistency of the industrial choices made regarding the “fuel cycle” and which could have consequences for safety. In 2024, on the La Hague site, Orano commissioned three new Fission Products EvaporatorConcentrators (NCPF R2) in the UP2-800 plant, thus completing the replacement of the previous equipment which was suffering from more advanced corrosion than imagined at the design stage. The projects aimed at restoring storage margins for spent fuels and plutonium-bearing materials continued, with a view to possible commissioning in 2025 after obtaining authorisations from ASN. The improvements to the situation of the Melox plant, observed in 2023, were confirmed in 2024. They help to stabilise the working of the “fuel cycle”, even if there are still limited margins in the case of any unforeseen event and countermeasures are still required to restore said margins, notably by increasing the storage density in the pools at La Hague, as authorised by ASN in December 2024. In 2024, Orano and EDF presented an update of the projected spent fuel volumes to be stored according to the various production scenarios from the La Hague and Melox plants, in the light of the new nuclear policy guidelines, notably assuming continued operation of EDF’s 900 Megawatts electric (MWe) reactors beyond 50 years. These projections push back the prospect of saturation of the spent fuel storage capacity to about 2040. EDF also announced that it was abandoning the centralised storage pool project and opting for new storage capacity operated by Orano, which should also be commissioned in about 2040. In this context, ASN considers that the overall working of the “fuel cycle” is stabilised. ASN nonetheless remains vigilant given the long-term limits on margins, the lack of redundancy of a certain amount of equipment and the ambitious nature of the hypotheses concerning both production and the absence of unexpected events blocking the La Hague and Melox plants. ASN Report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2024 335 AP “Nuclear fuel cycle” facilities 12 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 01 13 14 15

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