Cleanup and dismantling of facilities

40 years of plutonium recycling

In 1962, the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) created the plant in Cadarache to update the process for fabrication of plutonium fuels. This plant produces fuel for rapid neutron reactors. Taken over in 1991 by AREVA, it produces fuels for light water reactors.

In 2000, AREVA decided to transfer this production to the AREVA MELOX site, in the department of Gard. AREVA Cadarache made its last MOX fuel rods in July of 2003.

For nearly 40 years, the facility has thereby recycled more than 50 metric tons of plutonium, without any environmental impact.  

EUROFAB program: MOX for Peace

During the 1990s, the United States and the Russian Federation committed to reducing nuclear arsenal, declared excessive. Both states decided to eliminate 34 tons each of plutonium from these weapons.

In 2003, the AREVA group was chosen by the United States to fabricate four MOX fuel assemblies from American plutonium of military origin.

The fabrication of these assemblies was carried out on two sites of the Recycling Business Unit:

• The fabrication of pellets and rods at the AREVA Cadarache facility in fall of 2004.
• The fuel assembly operations in the AREVA MELOX plant in early 2005.

The four assemblies fabricated were then loaded into the Catawba nuclear power plant in June 2005, owned by the American electrical utility company Duke Power. They made it possible to supply electricity equivalent to the consumption of a city of nearly 100,000 inhabitants a year.

The American program demonstrates that civil nuclear purposes and the use of MOX in particular, can help contribute to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Condition of fabrication wastes

The AREVA Cadarache plant has proceeded, since the termination of its commercial production in July 2003, with the packing into rods of waste originating from its previous fabrications and with the packing of plutonium, in order to send these to the AREVA plant in La Hague.

These wastes are products taken out of the production circuit (pellets, powder...) and can be subject to value development. They are recycled at AREVA La Hague for the fabrication of new civil nuclear fuels.

This operation was completed, in compliance with obligations set by the Nuclear Safety Authority, on June 30, 2008.

Cleanup and dismantling of equipment

In parallel to the processing of waste products, AREVA Cadarache also updated techniques for clean-up and disassembly of equipment prior to the disassembly, on a large scale, of the installations. This made it possible to prepare the disassembly of the plant, which started during the second term of 2008 and will be completed at the end of 2012.

In concrete terms, the disassembly involved 432 glove boxes* and 28 tanks. After the disassembly stage, the facilities will be cleaned. This stage essentially incorporates management of waste generated by these operations. 

At the end of 2009, the rate of completion for the disassembly and clean-up operations was 35%.

The facility also pursues operations in applied research and development in order to validate new technologies on an industrial level, such as the updating of methods and worksheets for welding fuel rods.

* A glove box is a sealed compartment that serves as a barrier between nuclear materials and operators. The gloves are sealed into a wall to make it possible to manipulate objects in the box.

Plutonium treatment

AREVA has committed to cleaning and removing all the remaining plutonium in its facilities and plutonium originating from previous fuel production activities in the plant as well as from CEA and EDF.

On 30 June 2008, plutonium removal and treatment operations were completed for the AREVA La Hague site. As such, between 2003 and 2008, the equivalent of 3 years of production was recycled in the fabrication of new fuels.