The uranium waste detailed here originates from two stages in the nuclear fuel chain – from enrichment of natural uranium and the separation of nuclear spent fuel at reprocessing plants.

Uranium Enrichment

Enrichment of uranium increases the content of the fissile Uranium-235 component from the naturally occurring level 0.7% to 2 to 4% for commercial reactor fuels. The enrichment process incrementally diffuses or centrifuges a uranium hexafluoride (HEX) -bearing gas into an enriched stream, with the feedstock stream being depleted uranium (DU) below the 0.7% natural abundance which is referred to as DUF6. For the low levels of uranium enrichment required for civil nuclear reactor fuels, about 90% of the original feedstock mass remains in the DUF6 tails.

The general ratio is that for every one tonne of uranium enriched to 3.5% U-235 results an additional 7 tons of DU at 0.3% U-235 remains. Each operating reactor in Europe requires on average 30 tons of enriched uranium fuel each year, a further 200+ tons of uranium remains to be disposed of at the enrichment plant.

The principle enrichment plant in France, operated by Eurodif (a subsidiary company of Areva) is located at Pierrelatte, in the Rhone Valley. It is one of largest such facilities in the world. Its principal customer is Electricite de France (EDF) but has many other European customer countries. The other uranium enrichment company is the Dutch/German/UK consortium Urenco with facilities at Almelo (Netherlands), Gronau (Germany) and Capenhurst (the United Kingdom).

At the end of 2003, the inventory of French waste agency Andra stated that there were 220,000 tons of DU stored in France, resulting from the contracts from EDF and other customers. According to forecasts, this gigantic stock will exceed 350,000 tons by 2020 only as a result of enrichment for EDF.


Reprocessed Uranium

The reprocessed uranium (Repu) referred to in this report arises from the reprocessing of spent fuel at the two plants operated by Cogema/Areva factory la Hague. Additional large amounts of reprocessed uranium have been produced from the British government operated site at Sellafield. It appears that a small amount of this has been exported to Russia. From irradiated spent fuel reprocessing separates plutonium (around 1% of volume) and the high level waste fission products and minor actinides (3%) with the largest volume of solid waste being reprocessed uranium (96%). This does not include large volumes of gaseous and liquid wastes discharged directly to the environment.

In the case of reprocessing operations at la Hague, around 1,200 tons of irradiated spent fuel is transported from EdF’s 58 reactors. Approximately 850 tons are reprocessed each year of which around 805 tons is Repu. In addition to reprocessing of spent fuel from EdF, la Hague has reprocessed thousands of tons of spent fuel from utility customers in Europe and Japan.

The cumulated quantities of Repu produced through light water reactor spent fuel reprocessing at La Hague are over 18,000 tons, of which half is of French origin and half arising from foreign fuel, mainly from Germany and Japan.