The codified law no. 2016-1015 of 25 July 2016, which specifies the details of the creation of a reversible deep storage facility, represents the fulfilment of an important prerequisite before obtaining approval of the Cigéo project for the management of HLW-LL, ILW-LL radioactive waste. ANDRA is continuing its design studies, as well as appropriation and optimisation work, with a view to an application for permission to build the facility being submitted by the end of 2021. The file for the public interest declaration application was filed by ANDRA with the public authorities inAugust 2020.
ANDRA’s baseline schedule calls for a pilot industrial phase by 2030, followed by the start of delivery of the first waste (at this stage, the baseline for producers is still for intake of the first waste packages in 2031). It should be noted that if this date were to be delayed by a few years, this would not have a significant impact on our capacity for storing the waste in question beforehand, or on the financial amounts to be provisioned at present value.
On 15 January 2018, the ASN gave its opinion on the DOS (list of safety options) submitted by Cigéo in which it considered the project had on the whole reached a satisfactory technological maturity at that stage. The ASN’s draft opinion requires that alternatives to storing bituminous waste untreated at Cigéo be studied.
In September 2019, the expert panel instructed by DGEC in September 2018 to review the management of bituminous waste concluded that in principle, various handling options were feasible (storage or neutralisation), whilst emphasising the importance of further research to identify the most appropriate option. A four-party research programme between producers and ANDRA is already in progress on this issue.
Cigéo’s detailed design studies are being finalised by ANDRA. The detailed design review, organised at the request of the DGEC (French General Directorate for
Energy & Climate) by a group of independent experts, reported its findings in October 2020. Whilst issuing a mostly positive opinion on the dossier submitted by ANDRA, it expressed a certain number of recommendations for the finalisation of the detailed design studies and the construction permit application file, calling for even closer partnership between EDF, Orano, and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives,CEA) in this work.
As regards the tax status of Cigéo, Article 127 of France’s 2021 Finance Act has made a change to the taxation regime for BNFs under Article 43 of the 2000 Finance Act; rather than taxation based on ordinary law, they will now be taxed on the basis of a storage tax. The related provisions have yet to be defined and framed by the government.
LLW-LL comes from the decommissioning of the old NUGG reactors (graphite, processing waste – see section “Decommissioning of nuclear power plants”). The law of 28 June 2006 provides for a specific near-surface storage for this waste.
In July 2015, ANDRA transmitted a report on the feasibility of a storage centre on a site located in the Soulaines region (Aube) in France for an opinion from the ASN. Work is currently ongoing, as part of the national plan for the management of radio active materials and radioactive waste (PNGMDR) to identify the waste that could be taken on. Furthermore, studies conducted by EDF to characterise more precisely the radiological inventory of this waste have led to significant gains. As a result the possibility of storing part of the graphite (particularly that of the Chinon A2 reactor) in existing surface facilities can be reconsidered.
ASN opinion 2020-AV-0357 dated 6 August 2020 on the studies relating to the management of LLW-LL, issued following the work conducted between 2016 and 2018, as well as the orientations suggested by the contracting authorities for the PNGMDR in the current phase of development of the fifth edition of the plan, suggest a precise schedule for the next stages to enable the consolidation of the management strategy for this particular waste.
These specify the following by 2023:
They also show that should new storage sites be envisaged, in application of this management scheme, Andra will initiate a procedure for identifying sites and carrying out feasibility studies, followed by design studies, for these sites. If this management option is confirmed for the Vendeuvre-Soulaines local authorities’ storage site, Andra will submit a safety options file for the deployment of a LLW-LL repository, with a level of maturity corresponding to a detailed preliminary draft,
five years after theASN opinion on the report submitted covering the safety options file (i.e. in around 2028).
Although this procedure does not yet provide any clear visibility as to the date of availability of waste removal sites, it will enable information from ANDRA to be available in 2022-2023 with regard to the management solutions that can been visaged, and for these to be implemented within a timeframe compatible with the extraction of the graphite bricks from the reactors, maintaining two main options for graphite from the lead reactor (LLW-LL or the Aube repository (CSA)). The scenario currently modelled in the provisioning for the first graphite piles from Chinon A2 extracted in around 2040 is for them to be stored at CSA. The risk of construction of temporary storage at Chinon was also taken into account. All the provisions also cover the scenario of direct storage in a modular subsurface LLW-LL repository.
Short-Lived Very Low-, Low- and Intermediate-Level Waste comes from the operation of nuclear facilities (gloves, filters, resins, etc.) and their decommissioning (concrete, scrap, lagging, piping, etc.). They are stored above ground in the Soulaines and Morvilliers storage facilities run by ANDRA in the Aube département.
In order to minimise volumes, some waste is treated beforehand by melting or incineration at the Centraco plant owned by Cyclife France (now part of Cyclife Holding, a subsidiary of EDF). In 2016, following the acquisition of the English and Swedish assets of Studsvik, the holding company “Cyclife” was created. The goal is to group together all recently acquired assets and establish the development of the Group’s internal and external activities in terms of waste treatment and decommissioning. To this end, in 2019, the Cyclife Engineering and Graphitech(1) subsidiaries were set up. They have been tasked with developing decommissioning solutions for various technologies (in the main, Cyclife Engineering handles light water reactors and waste processing installations, while Graphitech deals with graphite reactors).
At 30 September 2020, Cyclife Holding also holds an 84.6% stake in Cyclife Digital Solutions, which specialises in tools and digital simulation used for decommissioning, and waste management.
In addition, following the PNGMDR public debate, in line with the joint ruling by the Ministry of Ecological Transition and the ASN, contracting authorities for the PNGMDR to work on a “change in the French regulatory framework applicable to the management of very low-level waste (VLLW)”, EDF is continuing to develop its industrial base, working in particular on a planned “techno centre”, to include cutting and fusion facilities, for the processing and reuse of metal VLLW from decommissioning in France and abroad.
EDF also conducts both its own R&D activities and R&D with a network of partners (nuclear operators, manufacturers, VSBs and SMEs, institutional and academic players), on the twin themes of the management of radioactive waste and decommissioning. EDF is a recognised leader in these fields and is taking part in seven EU projects to improve the performance of waste management and decommissioning projects, develop its expertise, and contribute to the development and implementation of the best international practices.
Each year, EDF makes provisions for the downstream side of the nuclear fuel cycle in France (see note 15 of the appendix to the consolidated financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2020 in section 6.1).
(1) Owned jointly by EDF and Veolia.
