France’s costly and unsatisfactory efforts at dismantling nuclear reactors

Romandie 12th Jan 2018 [Machine Translation] Dismantling: in France, nuclear country, the task remains immense. EDF may well show international ambitions in terms of nuclear dismantling, the industry still has to prove itself in France, the world’s second largest producer of nuclear electricity, where the task remains immense and the delays numerous.

“We dismantle nine reactors in France We consider that our know-how can put us in a very good position to win real market share internationally,” assured AFP on Wednesday Sylvain Granger director of deconstruction projects at EDF. An ambition
“staggering” for Barbara Romagnan, former PS MP, author of a parliamentary report that highlighted in early 2017 the “underrated” costs and growing delays of these projects.

“None of these French reactors has yet been totally dismantled, even though they were closed between 1985 and 1997,”
she argues. Elsewhere in the world, seventeen reactor vessels (more than 100 MW) have been dismantled in the United States, Germany and Spain, according to the Institute for Radiation Protection and Safety (IRSN).

In Chooz, EDF’s most advanced site, located in the Ardennes, the dismantling of the tank, the ultimate and most delicate stage, began in 2017. But the cutting of the internal components of the tank was suspended after the contamination. in June, a Swedish employee from Westinghouse, to whom EDF subcontracted this operation, according to the French company. EDF
estimates at 79 billion euros the cost of dismantling all its reactors in France (including 18.5 billion spent fuel management), said Thursday the company that spoke in 2000 of 16 billion euros.
https://www.romandie.com/news/880085.rom

January 15, 2018 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | decommission reactor, France