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French Court of Annulment historical judgment
Areva reprocessing activities for foreign clients illegal ?08 december 2005 - Paris
The French Court of Annulment (highest civil jurisdiction) confirmed yesterday the condemnation of Cogema/Areva for illegal storage of radioactive waste in France.
After a 4 years procedure around the reprocessing contract between Cogema/Areva and the Australian company ANSTO, the Court of Annulment confirmed yesterday that spent nuclear fuel and reprocessed radioactive material are “nuclear wastes”. This contradicts the industry claims.
The Annulment Court considers that :
- A spent nuclear fuel is a waste in the common sense of law. The Court says that the fuel “can’t be considered as a product obtained at an intermediary stage of a transformation process and that the only qualification which can apply is that of waste in the sense of the Article L. 541-1 II of the French Environment Code.”
- And, as a consequence, the « Loi Bataille » of 1991 forbidding any storage of foreign nuclear waste in France apart from those due to technical delays of reprocessing is applying for the cooling period of spent nuclear fuel. In concrete terms, foreign clients of Cogema can’t send their spent fuels for cooling in La Hague pools.
" This ruling clarifies the legal status of those materials and opens new jurisdictional perspectives as it allows to challenge Cogema’s activities of long term storage of foreign waste” explains Alexandre Faro, Greenpeace’s lawyer.
Greenpeace will address to Cogema/Areva some questions about those Australian waste : what exactly will be sent back and by when. After that, a lot of questions will arise and concerning all foreign wastes today stored in France from La Hague pools to Marcoule and even reprocessed uranium at the enrichment site of Pierrelatte.
According to Yannick Rousselet, Nuclear campaigner for Greenpeace France "the nuclear industry was playing with words to limit the waste question to vitrified wastes from reprocessing. This decision confirms what we have said for more than 20 years : all used radioactive material are waste materials and La Hague is an international dump site !”
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