National agency for radioactive waste. In France, radioactive waste is managed by the National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management (ANDRA), a public industrial and commercial institution created under the French law of 30 December 1991.

Nuclear safety authority. On behalf of the Government, the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) supervises nuclear safety and radiation protection in France to protect workers, patients, the public and the environment from the risks related to the use of nuclear power. It is responsible in particular for the external oversight of nuclear facilities in France. The ASN is an independent administrative authority comprised of over 300 people. At the national level, the ASN is represented by the Directorate-General for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection (DGSNR).

Nuclear fuel is in the form of an assembly made up of an array of 264 fuel rods, bound together by a rigid structure made of tubes and grids. Each fuel rod consists of a water-tight zirconium tube into which uranium oxide pellets are piled, constituting the fuel. The assemblies are loaded side by side into the reactor vessel − 205 assemblies are required for a 1,500MW reactor − to make up the core of the reactor. During operation, these assemblies are crossed by bottom to top with primary water which heats on contact and carries this energy to the steam generators.

International legal unit for measuring radioactivity. The Becquerel (Bq) is equal to one disintegration per second. The activity represented by this unit is so low that multiples of it are used: the MBq (megabecquerel or million Becquerels) and the GBq (gigabecquerel or billion Becquerels).

Generation technique for combined electricity and heat generation. The advantage of cogeneration is the ability to capture the heat produced by the fuel whereas in traditional electricity generation this heat is lost. This process also allows the same facility to meet the heating (hot water or steam) and electricity needs of both industrial and local authority customers. This system improves the energy efficiency of the generation process and reduces fuel use by an average of 20%.

A system allowing for the recording, at a given network connection point, of the volumes of electricity transmitted or distributed (power, frequency, active and reactive energy).

Situation in which an interconnection linking the national transmission grids cannot absorb all of the physical flows resulting from international exchanges required by market operators due to a shortage of capacity in the interconnection and/or the national transmission grids involved.

French energy regulatory Commission. CRE was created on 30 March 2000 to ensure the proper functioning of the electricity and gas market. The CRE, an independent body, regulates the opening of the French energy market. It ensures that all of the generators and eligible customers have non-discriminatory access to the network. Within its jurisdiction, this body supervises and authorises, settles any disputes and, if required, imposes sanctions. For a detailed description of its powers, see section 1.5.2.1.2 (“French legislation: the Energy Code”).

The most recent technology for generating electricity in a natural gas-fired plant. A combined cycle is made up of one or more combustion turbines and a steam turbine allowing for an improved yield. The syngas is routed to the combustion turbine, which generates electricity and very hot exhaust gases (effluents). The heat from the exhaust gases is recovered by a boiler, thus producing steam. Part of the steam is then recovered by the steam turbine to generate electricity.

The nuclear fuel cycle encompasses all industrial operations in France and abroad which enable the supply of the fuel to generate energy in a reactor, then to unload and process it. The cycle can be broken down into three stages:

The nuclear generation of 1 MWh of electricity (equivalent to the monthly consumption of two households) produces around 11g of total waste across all categories. Short-lived waste represents more than 90% of the total, but contains only 0.1% of the radioactivity of waste. Accordingly, based on their level of radioactivity, they are separated into two sub-categories: Low-Level waste and Very-Low-Level waste.Long-Lived Medium and High-Level waste are produced in low quantity (less than 10% of the total quantity), but they contain almost all of the radioactivity of the waste (99.9%).