Andra, Everything you ever wanted to know about ... · Everything you ever wanted to know about ....

Andra Everything you ever wanted to know about radioactive waste management

institutionnelle-sept2013.indd 1 11/09/2013 09:21:58

The M

euse/Haute-Marne underground laboratory


Pages 4/5Radioactivity and radioactive waste

Pages 6/7Andra, its role, its activities, its funding

Pages 8/9 The classification of radioactive waste and disposal concepts

Pages 10/11The journey taken by radioactive waste

Pages 12/13Andra sites

Pages 14/15Glossary

Key milestones in the management of radioactive waste in France

CONTENTS

The M

euse/Haute-Marne underground laboratory


4

RADIOACTIVITY and radioactive waste

Radioactivity

Radioactivity is a natural phenomenon, a property of certain unstable atoms, radionuclides, that can transform spontaneously into another atom while emitting radiation. Radioactive atoms can be found naturally in the human body, in food (milk, potatoes, fish, etc.) and in the environment (soil, rainwater, seawater, air etc.).

An element's radioactivity decreases naturally over time, more or less quickly depending on the type of radionuclide.

Since radioactivity was discovered, its properties have been used for a large number of applications: power production, chemistry, biology (studying cells), geology, archaeology (dating), farming, healthcare (diagnosing and treating cancers), etc.It can be also used in industry, for food preservation (ionisation), weld testing in the metallurgy field, sterilising medical equipment, or smoke detection for example. All these activities produce waste, some of which is radioactive.

Radioactive waste

Radioactive waste is made up of radioactive substances that cannot be used or reprocessed, and that have to be managed in specific ways.

It takes many different forms: rubble, scrap metal, gloves, filters, resins, overalls, pipettes, bottles, needles or everyday objects such as alarm clocks, fountains or lightning rod tips.

Radioactive waste may come from the maintenance or operation of nuclear facilities, their decommissioning, the reprocessing of spent fuel from nuclear power plants, the cleaning up of historic sites polluted by radioactivity, research activities, industrial processes, medical examinations or healthcare, or from private individuals with old objects dating from between the wars.

To protect humans and the environment from the hazards constituted by radioactive waste, France, like most other countries, has chosen to dispose of the various types of waste in industrial installations appropriate for each type. The aim is to isolate it until its radioactivity has decreased enough through natural decay to no longer constitute a risk.

There are already repositories in France that take in 90% of the radioactive waste produced every year. Andra is currently looking into solutions for dealing with other types of waste. In the meantime, the waste is in interim storage in specific facilities.

1 litre of mineral water: 5 Bq1 kilo of globe artichokes:

300 Bq

(expressed in becquerels, see page 14)

Examples of natural radioactivity

1 kg of potatoes: 150 Bq

In France, the production

of radioactive waste is the equivalent

of 2 kg per year per inhabitant.


5

2012 edition of the French National Inventory of Radioactive

Materials and Waste identifies about 1,320,000 m3 of

radioactive waste produced up to the end of 2010.

Origin of existing radioactive waste by sector Source: 2012 edition of the French National Inventory.

Quantity of waste produced in France per member of the population every year

2,500 kgof industrial

waste

360 kgof household waste

2 kg of radioactive waste

59%

11%

3% 1%

26%

Nuclear power

Research

Defence

Industry

Medical


6

Andra the National Radioactive Waste Management Agency

Disposal – in brief

In France, as in many countries, keeping waste in disposal facilities is the long-term solution chosen for

the industrial management of radioactive waste. The facilities are designed to confine the radioactivity present in the waste for the time needed to allow it

to decay. The safety of a disposal facility depends on several factors, depending on the nature of the waste:

• the package containing the waste; • the disposal cell (or repository structure) in

which waste packages are placed; • the geology of the site, constituting a long-

term natural barrier.

Andra is a publicly owned industrial and commercial body, set up by the French act of 30 December 1991. Its role was expanded by the 2006 Planning Act on the long-term management of radioactive materials and waste. Andra is independent of the producers of radioactive waste, and is under the supervision of the ministries responsible for energy, research and the environment.

Its role

Andra is responsible for identifying, implementing and guaranteeing safe management solutions for all French radioactive waste, in order to protect present and future generations from the risks inherent in such substances.

Its activities

Andra's role involves a number of activities:

• running the two existing above-ground disposal facilities in the Aube, the first one for low- and intermediate- level, short-lived waste (LILW-SL) and the other one for very-low-level waste (VLLW) , the Cires facility;

• monitoring the Manche disposal facility, the CSM, France’s first above-ground disposal facility for low- and intermediate-level waste, which is now closed;

• studying and designing disposal facilities for waste as yet without a special facility, that is:

> Low-level, long-lived waste (LLW-LL), > High-level and intermediate-level long-lived

waste (HLW, ILW-LL) - the Cigéo project;

• taking in radioactive waste from hospitals, research laboratories, universities and radioactive objects owned by private individuals (old luminous clocks and watches, healthcare equipment containing radium, natural laboratory salts, certain minerals, etc.);

• at the request of the owner or the authorities, cleaning up sites polluted by radioactivity, such as the laboratories used by Marie Curie;

• surveying and listing French radioactive waste and issuing theNational Inventory of Radioactive Materials and Waste every three years. The last edition appeared in 2012;

• informing all members of the public by means of documents, exhibitions, visits to its facilities, etc.;

• preserving the memory of its centres;

• promoting and disseminating its know-how outside France.


7

Key figureson 31/12/2012

571 members of staff 5 sites:

• Head office in Châtenay-Malabry;• 2 disposal facilities being operated in the Aube: Cires and CSA;• 1 closed disposal facility in the Manche: CSM;• 1 facility in the Meuse/Haute-Marne (CMHM) made up of: - An Underground Research Laboratory, - Technological Exhibition Centre, - EcoDatabank, opening in October 2013.

Its funding

Andra's funding comes from:

• contracts with radioactive waste producers (EDF, Areva, CEA, hospitals, research centres etc.) for the disposal of their radioactive waste;

• a "research contribution" collected by the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) from waste producers, for research work and studies on storage and disposal of high-level and intermediate-level long-lived waste;

• a state subsidy for its public service duties (compilation of the French National Inventory, collection of radioactive objects from private individuals, and clean-up of sites polluted by radioactivity for which the party responsible has defaulted).

Andra's head office in Châtenay-Malabry near Paris

Preserving the memory

Andra is going to keep the records from its disposal facilities for several centuries,

so that future generations, aware of their existence and their contents, will understand the changes occurring in

them and be able to intervene if necessary.


6

In France, there are 5 waste categories, classified according to their disposal solution, which depends in particular on 2 criteria: radioactivity level and half-life.

Very-low-level waste (VLLW)

Very low-level waste comes mainly from the operation and decommissioning of nuclear facilities. It also comes from conventional sectors of industry that use naturally radioactive materials (chemistry, metallurgy, power production etc.). Some comes from the clean-up and remediation of historic sites polluted by radioactivity, and is in the form of

inert waste (concrete, rubble, earth, etc.) or metal. It is stored above ground in the Collection, Storage and Disposal Facility (Centre Industriel de Regroupement, d’Entreposage et de Stockage - Cires), opened in 2003. When it arrives in the Cires facility, 30% of the waste received undergoes specific processing before disposal:- Some plastic waste or scrap metal is compacted in

order to reduce its volume;- Liquid waste (polluted water, sludge) is solidified and

made chemically inert. The waste is then placed in drums or big bags..

Once prepared, these waste packages are labelled and stacked in vaults dug out of the clay layer, a few metres below the surface.Once the vault is full, it is roofed over with a covering containing sand, a waterproof membrane and clay.

Low and intermediate level, short-lived radio-active waste (LILW-SL)

Low and intermediate level, short-lived radioactive waste is produced either by the maintenance and operation of nuclear facilities (clothing, tools, filters, etc.), or by research or healthcare activities in laboratories and hospitals. It contains essentially short-lived radioactive atoms, and since 1992 has been disposed of in the Aube disposal facility (CSA), which took over from the Manche disposal facility, operational from 1969 to 1994. Prior to disposal, some of the waste packages are compacted or solidified and then mixed with concrete before being placed in a concrete or metal container An LILW package comprises 15 to 20% waste and 80 to 85% embedding material. It is placed in reinforced concrete surface structures 25 metres long and 8 metres high, built over two superposed geological layers: one of sand, the other of clay. These structures are then closed by a concrete slab, made watertight by a layer of impermeable resin. Finally, a clay cap several metres thick will be placed on the structures to provide long-term protection.

8

CLASSIFICATION OF RADIOACTIVE WASTE and disposal concepts

Breakdown of volume and radioactivity level per type of radioactive waste

(Source: French National Inventory of Radioactive Materials and Waste - 2012 edition )

Level of radioactivity (%) Volume of waste (%)

High level waste (HLW)0.296

Intermediate level waste long-lived (ILW-LL)34

Low level long-lived waste (LLW/LL)70.01

Low- and intermediate-level waste, short-lived (LILW-SL)630.02

Very-low-level waste (VLLW)27<0.01


Low-level long-lived waste (LLW-LL)

Low-level long-lived waste is made up mainly of two kinds of waste: “radium-bearing” and “graphite".

> Radium-bearing waste owes its name to the radium it contains. It comes from the processing of various minerals used, for example, in the automotive industry or fine metallurgy. It is currently stored on the CEA and industrial producers sites.

> Graphite waste, as its name suggests, con-tains graphite, a mineral corresponding to a very pure variety of carbon... It is produced from the dismantling of the first generation of nuclear reactors, today shut down,

and is currently stored on the EDF, CEA and Areva sites.

> Other types of waste also come into this category: radioactive lighting rod tips, smoke detectors, lumi-nous paint (formerly used in the clock-making industry for example). Radioactive objects, which, although they are no longer produced, may be found in private houses (radium watches, radium needles).

Andra is examining the various possible management scenarios for this waste, in order to propose appropriate, safe disposal solutions..

High-level and intermediate-level waste, long-lived (HLW/ILW-LL)

High-level waste (HLW) and intermediate-level waste (ILW-LL) come mainly from the nuclear power industry and related research, plus, to a lesser extent, activities involved in the Defence sector.

> HL waste corresponds mainly to highly radioactive residue from the reprocessing of spent fuel used for power production, and to a very slight extent, waste from the Defence sector).

> ILW-LL is of various types. It mainly consists in the metal cladding structures surrounding nuclear fuel elements (hulls and end caps) or residues from the operation of nuclear facilities

9

Cigéo, the deep geological reposi-tory project for

HLW and ILW-LL

With the 1991 act, Parliament added to French law the concept of long-term, safe solutions for HL and IL-LL waste

with the aim of not leaving responsibility for it to future generations. In 2006, Parliament opted for deep reversible

disposal as the solution for the long-term management of HLW and ILW-LL radioactive waste. The act made Andra responsible

for studying the design and location on the border between the Meuse and Haute-Marne districts.

Pending the commissioning of the disposal facility, existing packages of HLW and ILW-LL are in dry

storage in the buildings on the site where they are produced, mainly at La Hague,

Marcoule and Cadarache.

Volume of waste (%)

Loading the disposal vault with the packages in the Aube disposal facility (CSA)


In situ radioactive decay before being dealt with in the same way as standard waste

Reception of waste by Andra in its dedicated disposal

facilities

Storage on its production site for waste from the nuclear power industry (HLW, ILW-LL and LLW-LL) and storage in the dedicated installation in the Cires facility for waste from non-nuclear- power industry (ILW-LL and LLW-LL) until dedicated disposal facilities are opened

THE JOURNEY TAKEN BY radioactive waste

Processing and packaging (*) of most radioactive waste by the producers

Transporting radioactive waste to Andra's facilities in the Aube

610

Using the properties of radioactivity in 5 main economic sectors: the nuclear power indus-try, defence, research, non-nuclear-power industry, healthcare

These

data are recorded by m

eans of a bar code identif c

ation number, which constitu

tes the package's ID used for waste traceability and for recording its exact location

in the fa

cility. I

n order to m

ake sure of th

e quality of th

e packaging and compliance with these rules, regular checks are performed by Andra on producers' premises.

In-depth inspection on packages chosen at random

after delivery

Production of radioactive

waste

* Producers are re

quired to

comply with crite

ria def ned by Andra: weight, ra

dioactive atoms contained, ra

diological activity and hazards.

Waste sortedby the producers as soon as it has been produced

HL, IL-LL and LL-LL

waste

LIL-SL and VLL waste

Very-short-

lived wastehalf-life

less than 100 days


11

Radiological checkson packages, their contents and on their compliance with Andra's requirements

Processing of certain packages before disposal

to reduce their volume (com-pacting or solidifcation

for example)

Closure of disposal facilities

Monitoring disposal facilities and their surroundings while they are operating and after they have been closed

Preserving the memory of our sites

and passing downto future generations

after 300 years

These

data are recorded by m

eans of a bar code identif c

ation number, which constitu

tes the package's ID used for waste traceability and for recording its exact location

in the fa

cility. I

n order to m

ake sure of th

e quality of th

e packaging and compliance with these rules, regular checks are performed by Andra on producers' premises.

Disposal of packages

In-depth inspection on packages chosen at random

after delivery

* Producers are re

quired to

comply with crite

ria def ned by Andra: weight, ra

dioactive atoms contained, ra

diological activity and hazards.

VLL waste structure


The Manche disposal facility (CSM)

France’s first disposal facility, with a 15-hectare foot-print, took in 527,225 m3 of low- and intermediate- level radioactive waste between 1969 and 1994. It is currently in the monitoring phase, which will last at least 300 years.

CENTRE DE STOCKAGE DE LA MANCHE �ZI�de�Digulleville�-�BP�807�•�50448�Beaumont-Hague�cedex�-�France Tel.: 0810 120 172

Find out more on www.andra.fr/andra-manche

The Aube disposal facilities

> The industrial facility for grouping, storage and disposal (Cires)

The 45-hectare Cires facility has been taking in and disposing of very-low-level waste since 2003. It has also dealt with the collection and storage of non- nuclear-power waste since the autumn of 2012.

It has received authorisation for 650,000 m3, and is used for disposal of very-low-level waste.

In the building used for collection, non-nuclear-power waste is delivered, labelled and, if applicable, repack-aged, before being put into storage or a disposal facility.

The storage building takes in packages of non-nucle-ar-power waste (certain radioactive lightning rod tips, some radium-containing items used in healthcare, etc.) until a dedicated disposal facility is set up.

> The Aube disposal facility (CSA)

This facility, with a 95-hectare footprint and a capacity of 1,000,000 m3, is dedicated to low- and intermedi-ate-level, short-lived waste. It has been in operation since 1992. It took over from the Manche disposal facility, thus benefiting from 25 years of experience.

CENTRES INDUSTRIELS DE L’ANDRA DANS L’AUBE �BP�7�•�10200�Soulaines-Dhuys�-�France Tel.: 0 800 314 151(call free from a land line)

Find out more on: www.andra.fr/andra-aube

12

ANDRA'S sites

Key figures for Andra's disposal facilities in the Aube on 31/12/2012

> 269,611 waste packages disposed of in the Cires facility since 2003, i.e. 277,448 m3, corresponding to 35% of the facility's official total disposal capacity.

> 332,361 waste packages disposed of in the Aube facilities since 1992, i.e. 267,496 m3, corresponding to 26.7% of the facility's official

total disposal capacity.

Water quality monitoring station, part of the observatory system.


13

The Meuse/Haute-Marne facility (CMHM)

> The Underground Research Laboratory

Set up in 2000, the Underground Research Laboratory, at a depth of 490 metres, is a unique research labo-ratory studying reversible deep disposal for high-level (HLW) and intermediate-level long-lived (ILW-LL) waste. Its underground drifts are being used to study in situ a 160-million-year-old layer of clay.The French 2006 act has given Andra responsibility for designing and setting up a deep geological repository for this type of waste. If it is licensed, It will be called Cigéo and will be located near the laboratory.

LABORATOIRE SOUTERRAIN Route�départementale�960�•�BP�9�•�55290�Bure�-�France� Tel.: 0 805 107 907 (call free from a land line)

Find out more on: www.andra.fr/andra-meusehautemarne and www.cigeo.com

> The Technological Exhibition Centre

The Technological Exhibition Centre presents Cigéo, the project for a geological repository for long-lived high- and intermediate-level waste, through a display of models and the industrial robots and prototypes produced by Andra to test and validate the technologi-cal concepts involved in this type of disposal: concrete package container, handling system, etc.

ESPACE TECHNOLOGIQUEChemin des trois fnages 52230 Saudron - France Tel.: 0805 107 907(call free from a land line)

Key figures for the Underground Research Laboratory

Over 1.2 kilometres of experimental drifts.Over 40 experiments set up in the underground driftsCooperation agreements with over 10 research bodies and universities.Contacts with over 70 academic laboratories.

Environmental monitoring

Before each site was opened, Andra recorded the initial situation, which is used to describe the main features and their surroundings. The reports are the baseline for the analyses performed during the operation and monitoring phases, enabling Andra to check that its activities only have a slight impact on the environment; a wide range of samples is taken to analyse the quality of the water, air, soil, flora and fauna. In 2012, over 1,500 analyses in the vicinity of the Cires facility, over 14,000 measurements in and around the CSA, and over 10,000 analyses in and around the CSM.

In 2007, in the context of the Cigéo project (the planned Radioactive Waste Collection, Storage and Disposal Facility for HLW and ILW-LL), Andra set up the Permanent Environmental Observatory (OPE). The purpose of the Observatory is to report on the precise state of the various locations around the planned disposal facility before it is built, and to monitor developments over at least a century, while the facility is being operated. The Observatory includes a number of ecological observation, experimentation and conservation systems, most of which form part of national and international networks.

Andra sites are open to the public free of

charge, all year round.

Water quality monitoring station, part of the observatory system. To guarantee the traceability and durability of the

data collected by the Observatory, Andra has built an Ecobank, near its Underground Laboratory so that samples taken may be kept over a long period. It is scheduled to be opened in 2013.


GLOSSARY

AActivity: level of radioactivity. Measured in becquerels.

Atom: element making up matter (constitutes air, water, earth, living things etc.).Each atom is made up of a nucleus (protons and neutrons) with electrons orbiting around it.

BBecquerel (Bq): measurement unit of the level of radioactivity, named after Henri Becquerel who discovered radioactivity at the end of the nineteenth century.

DDisposal: long-term solution for industrial management of radioactive waste.The safety of the disposal facility depends on three elements: the packages containing the waste, the disposal structures in which the packages are placed and the site geology which constitutes a natural barrier. Disposal structure: structure in which waste packages are placed.

G Graphite waste: mainly made up of the sleeves around the fuel from the first nuclear reactors, which have now been shut down.

PPackage: container in which radioactive waste is placed usually immobilised in a “matrix” (concrete or glass).

RRadioactive half-life (or period): average time after which a radioactive atom naturally loses half of its activity. Thus the activity of a radioactive product is divided by four after two half-lives and by eight after three half-lives. After ten half-lives, the activity has been divided by 1,000. A distinction is made between waste in which the main radioactive atoms have a short half-life (up to and including 31 years), and waste in which these main radioactive atoms have a long half life (31 years and over). The 31-year cut-off was determined by the radioactive half-life of caesium 137. It is generally considered that the first category is no longer dangerous after 300 years.

Radioactivity: most atoms (such as hydrogen for example) are stable and are not radioactive. Others, such as plutonium, are unstable and spontaneously transform into other atoms (which may or may not be stable). As they transform, they release surplus energy in the form of radiation, until such time as they become stable again: this phenomenon is called radioactivity. Radiation: radioactive atoms emit radiation with widely differing types of energy. There are three main types of radiation which are penetrating to varying degrees. Alpha radiation, which travels a few centimetres through air, is stopped simply by a sheet of paper. Beta radiation travels several metres in air. It is stopped by a sheet of aluminium or a pane of glass. Gamma radiation, which is of the same type as X-rays but with far more energy, is stopped by several centimetres of lead or several decimetres of concrete. Radium-bearing waste: mainly made up of earth contaminated with radium from the cleaning up of polluted industrial sites, and materials from the processing of ore containing uranium or thorium. Reversibility: according to the 2006 Planning Act, deep disposal of intermediate-level long-lived waste and high-level waste must be reversible for at least 100 years. Reversibility consists in leaving future generations the option of modifying or altering the disposal process, for example by retrieving packages from disposal facilities if another management mode becomes available. A new Act will specify reversibility conditions.

SSievert (Sv): measurement unit for the biological effects on humans of exposure to radioactivity. According to regulations, the annual dose from activities in the nuclear industry must be as low as possible and not exceed 1 mSv for the public. By way of comparison, in France, the average annual exposure to naturally occurring radioactivity is 2.4 mSv, and 1.1 mSv for artificial radioactivity (exposure from medical procedures).

A dose of 1 mSv is: 17 months in the Paris area, 7 Paris-San Francisco return flights, the annual average from medical radiology procedures in France per member of the population.

Storage: temporary waste management solution for radioactive waste, before its disposal.

14


15

1969Opening of the Manche disposal facility (surface facility). It stopped receiving waste in 1994 and is now in the active monitoring phase

1979Creation of Andra within the CEA

1991Act of 30th December, the first in France, concerning the responsibility for and management of radioactive waste. It gave Andra its status as an industrial and commercial public body, independent of radioactive waste producers

1992Low- and intermediate-level short-lived waste disposal facility (CSA - surface facility) opened in the Aube

1999Licensing of the Meuse/Haute-Marne underground research laboratory to study the feasibility of deep disposal of intermediate-level/long-lived and high-level waste

2001> First four-year contract between the State and Andra, defining the Agency’s functions> Dual ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certification obtained

2003> Commissioning of the very-low-level waste disposal facility (Cires - surface facility)> The Manche disposal facility officially entered its monitoring phase

2005Submission to the authorities of a synthesis report (Dossier 2005) on the feasibility of deep reversible disposal of long-lived and intermedi-ate-level and high-level radioactive waste

2005/2006Public debate on overall options with respect to management of HLW and ILW-LL

2006Parliamentary debate on the long-term solutions for management of radioactive waste, with the 28th June Planning Act being passed to extend the role and duties of Andra

2007Permanent Environmental Observatory set up

2008 Call for applications by local authorities for siting of a disposal facility for low-level/long-lived waste (about forty applications were received over the year)

2009 > Withdrawal of both towns selected for the LLW-LL project, due to pressure from opponents

2010> Publication of the 2010-2012 National radioactive materials and waste management plan (PNGMDR) > Validation by the Government of an area of about 30 km2 proposed by Andra for siting Cigéo, the geological disposal facility for long-lived intermediate-level waste and high-level waste

> Launch of the website:dechets-radioactifs.com> OHSAS 18001 certification

2011Launch of Cigéo project's preliminary phase

2012> Commissioning of Collection and Storage installations for non- nuclear-power waste in the Cires centre (Collection, Storage and Disposal Facility) in the Aube> Publication of the latest edition of National Inventory of Radioactive Materials and Waste

2013 > Public debate on the Cigéo project, organised by the French National Public Debate Commission> Launch of the website:cigeo.com

KEY DATES in radioactive waste management in France

The website dechets-radioactifs.com shows in a didactic, clear and comprehensive way, the complete range of issues associated with radioactive waste, from use of the properties of radioactivity, up until the disposal stage.Anyone concerned by this topic will find simple answers to legitimate questions on an interface that is both entertaining and easy to access.


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Radioactive waste management agency

1/7, rue Jean-Monnet

F-92298 Châtenay-Malabry cedex - France

Tel. +33 (0)146 118 000

www.andra.fr/international


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