French high level wastes management

The first French spent fuel reprocessing plant went on stream in 1956 at Marcoule. Since then, all French irradiated fuels and some foreign spent fuels have been reprocessed either in this plant or in a subsequent plant built at La Hague. Marcoule is primarily devoted to metallic fuels, and La Hague to oxide fuels. The fission products solutions generated by reprocessing are acid liquids. They are stored on site in double walled stainless steel tanks fitted with a cooling device to deal with thermal release due to radioactive decay. Although these liquids are retrievable and can be transfered from one tank to another, and in spite of the fact that no disturbance such as overheating or leakage has ever occurred, a decision was made to solidify these solutions in order to make interim storage and, later on, ultimate disposal, safer and easier to control. Glass was chosen, because it is a flexible medium to deal with and it answers the quality requirements of ultimate disposal as well as the manufacturing constraints, such as equipment corrosion, volatilization during fabrication, and suitability to casting into canisters