Strategy for decommissioning energy producing nuclear power stations in France

Although final shutdown on the first large PWR Power Stations should not occur before 2015, Electricity of France is nevertheless presently concerned by the decommissioning of its nuclear plants. The shutdown programme of the gas-graphite units is in progress and the medium power PWR plant (300 Mwe) installed at CHOOZ in the Ardennes will be finally shutdown at the end of 1991. This situation required EDF to have a policy available which enables it to simultaneously run the double operation ''Plant shutdown - decommissioning'' and ''New constructions -increasing available power'' from both the technical and financial viewpoints. (Author)