Orano had to shut down one of its two nuclear waste reprocessing plants, located in La Hague (Manche), for at least two months, following in particular a corrosion problem, we learned from the site on Friday. .
"The UP3 plant was shut down at the end of September and we hope to restart at the beginning of December," said the management of the site, confirming information from the daily
La Presse de la Manche
.
This shutdown is linked in particular to a problem with evaporators, highly irradiating tanks, under close surveillance since 2016 due to faster corrosion than expected.
One of the evaporators has reached "a shutdown criterion", with a wall thickness of 7.5 mm (against 14 mm when the tanks were put into service between 1989 and 1994), according to Orano.
Another evaporator also had to be shut down for repair after the detection of a leak in a vapor discharge pipe, according to the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN).
However, the shutdown of two of the three evaporators leads to that of the plant, according to Orano.
In 2020, Orano announced an investment of 700 million euros for the gradual replacement from 2022 of the six evaporators at La Hague.
The commissioning of the new UP3 evaporators is scheduled for 2023, according to Orano.
The site with the most radioactivity in Europe
“There are no partial unemployment measures. We are taking the opportunity to carry out scheduled maintenance operations in advance, ”the management specified on Friday. Management assures us that it is still too early to say whether this stop will have an impact on the quantity of reprocessed fuel in 2021. All the fuel spent in French nuclear power plants converge on La Hague in order to be reprocessed there. Before their reprocessing, they cool in the huge swimming pools on the site. These pools are threatened with saturation in 2030. ASN "insists on the importance of anticipation and control of the remedies that would be implemented on this subject", she indicated on Friday.
These 8 m high evaporators "ensure the concentration of fission products, which contain most of the radioactivity" of the fuels, according to ASN.
They are only accessible via robots.
According to management, nearly 5,000 people work on the site: 4,000 Orano employees and 1,000 employees of subcontracting companies.
"The workforce linked to the operation of the UP3 plant installations represents nearly 350 people", excluding maintenance or radiation protection, according to management.
La Hague is the site with the most radioactivity in Europe.
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