EDF CONFIRMS EARLY DISMANTLING OF
FIRST-GENERATION REACTORS

Electricite de France (EDF) has decided to take a faster track on decommissioning its first-generation nuclear power units, the utility confirmed late last month.

A spokesman said top management had signed off on a 20-billion-franc (about U.S.$2.9-billion) program to dismantle its eight oldest reactors, all shut permanently, by 2020-2025, about 25 years earlier than EDF originally planned.

Pierre Rolland, head of the decommissioning program in EDF’s engineering division, said the utility wants to “demonstrate concretely its capacity to carry out complete deconstruction,” using the term coined at EDF a few years ago to cover the entire decommissioning process. The utility has been under pressure from safety authority DSIN to speed dismantling programs, in part because of what DSIN chief Andre-Claude Lacoste considers the risk of losing information about a shuttered plant over longer periods.

However, EDF officials said, the utility’s policy toward dismantling its standardized large PWRs hasn’t changed. Up to now, EDF has said it will wait 50 years before total deconstruction of the PWRs, but is considering, with encouragement from DSIN, whether a 25-year timeline might be more advantageous.

The eight first-generation units are: the 70-MW heavy water reactor at Brennilis, half-owned by the Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique; the Chooz-A prototype PWR, half-owned by Electrabel; and six gas-cooled, graphite-moderated units at Chinon, St. Laurent-des-Eaux, and Bugey. The decision, which still must be confirmed by EDF’s board of directors, also concerns the Creys-Malville fast breeder plant, shut prematurely in 1998.

Policy Decisions

EDF expects to present the new policy to DSIN shortly, once the decision is endorsed by the board.

EDF’s resolve to dismantle the gas-cooled reactor plants within 25 years contrasts with the policy adopted up to now by British Nuclear Fuels plc and British Energy, which have said they want to wait 70 to 100 years or more after reactor closure to take their magnox and AGR sites to greenfield status. A prominent U.K. consultant, Gordon MacKerron, said that policy puts the U.K. “in an uncomfortable position” given that other OECD countries’utilities expect to have discharged their decommissioning liabilities by 2060 at the latest (NW, 2 Nov. ’00, 10). 

Fuel has been removed from all the sites except for Creys-Malville, where it is under way but has been delayed by special problems. Removal of fuel and operational waste corresponds to Level 1 dismantling as defined by the IAEA. Rolland said that EDF’s policy aims to reach Level 2 status for the nine closed units within five to 10 years. Level 2 consists in reducing the controlled (radioactive) zone of the installation to the reactor building and removing all parts that can be dismantled easily. Each new dismantling stage requires a new license under French regulations.

Expensive Jobs

In an interview, Rolland said EDF’s studies project that dismantling of the utility’s GCRs will be “considerably more expensive” than the same job for its 58 standardized PWR units. Studies concluded at the end of 1999 confirmed earlier estimates that decommissioning the PWRs will cost about 15% of their complete construction cost, or around FF 1.5-billion for a 900-MW PWR unit. Deconstructing the 70-MW HWR at Brennilis, on the other hand, is expected to cost a total of FF 2-billion, of which half falls to EDF. Brennilis represents something of an extreme, he said, because of its 200 fuel channels, its size (about the same as a 900-MW PWR) and relative complexity, and the lack of the “series factor” that applies to the LWRs. 

The gas-cooled reactors, whose nominal capacities range between 200 megawatts and 540 megawatts, are projected to cost FF 1.8-billion (in today’s money) on average to dismantle to Level 3, Rolland said. The 300-MW Chooz-A PWR will cost more than other PWRs, or about FF 1.7-billion, because of the reactor’s unique loca-tion inside a cavern.

The 1,200-MW Superphenix breeder plant at Creys-Malville is another case entirely, not only because fuel removal is complicated but also because some 5,000 tons of sodium coolant must be removed and decontaminated. Rolland said deconstruction of Creys-Malville components won’t begin until the second half of this decade. The original Creys-Malville partners—EDF and a group of foreign utilities that have now withdrawn—considered a “realistic” estimate of the dismantling cost to be FF 5.8-billion, not including disposition of its plutonium fuel. That worked out to 18% of the original construction cost. Rolland said late last month that EDF, the sole owner now, expects to spend a total of more than FF 20-billion over 20 years or so to totally dismantle the plant and deal with the fuel and sodium. A final decision on the fate of the Creys-Malville sodium is expected this year. EDF has provisionally planned to treat it between 2005 and 2012-2013.

EDF's deconstruction provisions, which are kept as special line item on the utility’s books, totalled about FF 50-billion at the end of last year. Rolland said EDF adds about FF 4-billion each year to the fund based on “periodic adjustments” of projected requirements.

The Brennilis dismantling program, which was supposed to be a model program, has run into numerous delays, associated partly with the dual management by EDF and the CEA. Last year, the CEA asked for, and obtained, transfer of the operating license for the shut facility to EDF, after the project had accumulated some four years’ delay.  Level 2 dismantling was scheduled to be completed at the end of last year and Level 3 studies have begun, but imple-mentation is slower than anticipated.

Besides organization, EDF’s biggest problem in dismantling the first-generation units is the lack of waste disposal sites. Rolland observes that the French utility “isn’t so bad off” because it has a low-level waste disposal site at Soulaines. But national radwaste management company Andra has experienced delays in licensing a planned site for disposal of very low-level waste (VLLW) which it hopes to build alongside the existing low- and medium-level waste (LLW/MLW) center at Soulaines, and last autumn told DSIN the site might not be ready until mid-2004 (NW, 5 Oct. ’00, 13).

Recently, DSIN issued an order to EDF requiring it to have storage sites ready to accept VLLW “no later than four years from now.”

Another thorny problem for the GCRs is their graphite moderator blocks and fuel channel sleeves, which do not qualify for disposal at Soulaines because of their alpha content. Rolland said having a disposal facility for the 17,000 metric tons of graphite at the six units is a priority for EDF. Andra has developed a conceptual design for a disposal facility for low-level alpha-bearing wastes in a clay formation, but there’s no site identified yet. Rolland said EDF is basing its program on the availability of a graphite disposal center in 2010.

Dedicated disposal sites for long-lived MLW and for high-level waste aren’t expected to be available until 2020, but the volumes of those wastes are much lower than for the lower-activity categories.

The lack of waste sites is already posing a big problem

for EDF at Brennilis. The original 1996 decommissioning license for the HWR facility allowed two years’ interim storage of waste on site; EDF asked for a two-year extension, and received authorization for one additional year. Last year, EDF asked for 1.5 years more and received another year’s extension. An EDF official said last autumn that the utility was “expecting” DSIN to react and was girding for new licensing procedures.

A review of EDF’s decommissioning waste projections, presented by Michel Campani of the utility’s Nuclear Operations division to the Safewaste 2000 conference in Montpellier last year, estimated the following volumes of waste from decommissioning the eight first generation units:

—Metallic waste: 25,000 MT of VLLW, an equivalent mass of short-lived LLW/MLW, and 200 MT of long-lived MLW;

—Graphite: 15,000 MT of long-lived LLW;

—Concrete: 70,000 MT of VLLW and 75,000 MT of short-lived LLW/MLW;

—Miscellaneous: 1,800 MT of VLLW and 1,400 MT of short-lived LLW/MLW.

In contrast, decommissioning of a typical four-unit PWR site is expected to produce 17,000 MT of VLLW, 9,500 MT of short-lived LLW/MLW, and 500 MT of long-lived MLW in the metallic category; 900 MT of insulation (VLLW); and a total of 1,900 MT of concrete, about half of it VLLW.