France's Nuclear Fix?

By Arjun Makhijani¹

The nuclear establishment regularly points to France as the model nuclear energy state. Almost eighty percent of its electricity comes from nuclear power plants. It reprocesses its spent nuclear fuel to recover the plutonium, which it makes into mixed oxide fuel - a mixture of plutonium dioxide and depleted uranium dioxide called MOX fuel. This supplies 30 percent of the fuel for 20 of its 58 reactors. This "recycling" is held up as the solution to nuclear waste problems - with the implication that France has solved them. All this is supposed to help solve the problem of reducing carbon dioxide emissions (and there is near general agreement that this is a global imperative of considerable urgency). Finally, the French public is said to be more sensible in that they support clean nuclear energy as distinct from the skepticism of the U.S. public. Let us disentangle the fairy tales from the facts. First the facts from the side of the ledger that the nuclear establishment loves:

1. France does get nearly 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power.

2. It does reprocess most of its uranium spent fuel at the largest commercial reprocessing facility in the world, located on the Normandy Peninsula at La Hague. France has two reprocessing units there, one for reprocessing domestic spent fuel and the other for foreign spent fuel. The site also stores highly radioactive liquid waste arising from reprocessing and highly radioactive glass logs

that result from mixing the high-level liquid waste with molten glass. The volume of these radioactive glass logs is about a third of the volume of the spent fuel that is reprocessed.

3. France imports all of its uranium requirements.

4. MOX fuel generates less than ten percent of France's nuclear electricity.

Now for some of the inconvenient realities.

Pollution from reprocessing

Like every other country that has nuclear power plants, France has a large and complex nuclear waste problem that it is nowhere close to solving. Reprocessing and vitrification do reduce the volume of high-level radioactive waste, but they create other problematic waste streams. For instance, the La Hague plant uses a pipeline to discharge hundreds of millions of liters of liquid radioactive waste into the English Channel each year, polluting the oceans all the way to the Arctic. This egregious pollution continues on the basis of a disingenuous renaming of liquid waste as "discharges." If the same waste were put into 55- gallon drums and dumped overboard from a ship, it would be illegal under the 1970 London Dumping Convention. But somehow the "discharges" are permitted. Twelve of the fifteen governmental parties to the Oslo-Paris agreement have asked France and Britain, which has two reprocessing plants in Northwestern England, to stop these discharges, to no avail. It is a weak treaty - the abstaining parties, Britain and France, are not required to comply.

Further, reprocessing creates new streams of solid waste. For instance, there are significant volumes of waste contaminated with plutonium, called long-lived intermediate-level waste in France, much of which is like transuranic waste in the United States. This is designated for disposal in a deep geologic repository, along with the highly radioactive vitrified waste. French waste data do not allow easy comparison of reprocessing and non-reprocessing waste volumes for repository waste. But it should be noted that the volume of French long-lived intermediate waste to be disposed of in a repository is more than ten times greater than the volume of high-level waste.² Then there is the contaminated uranium that is recovered as part of the reprocessing system. Table 1 shows the approximate composition of fresh and spent fuel from a pressurized water reactor (the type used in France and also the most common one in the United States).

Note: Trace quantities of U-234 and activation products are not shown. Reproduced from Arjun Makhijani, Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy (Takoma Park, MD: IEER Press; Muskegon, MI: RDR Books), 2007. On the web at www.ieer.org/carbonfree/.

Only about one percent of mass of spent fuel is plutonium. This is the part that is "recycled." This recycled part creates MOX spent fuel which has a degraded isotopic composition of plutonium that is more complex to reprocess and more difficult to use in light water reactors. Eventually MOX spent fuel will likely be disposed of in a deep geological repository along with the vitrified waste and transuranic waste.

Reprocessing and depleted uranium waste

Ninety-five percent of the mass of spent fuel is uranium, almost all of it uranium-238, which is not a fissile material. This uranium is contaminated with traces of fission products, plutonium, and other radioactive materials. In theory it can be re-enriched and used as a fuel, but since it is contaminated, it makes the problem of processing and enrichment of uranium more complex and costly. For starters, the equipment for uranium processing and enrichment gets contaminated with these materials, which are much more radioactive per unit mass than natural or low-enriched uranium. France conveniently sends this contaminated uranium to Russia,³ which apparently does not mind contaminating its enrichment plants. It should be noted that the U.S. compensation program for nuclear weapons workers exposed to radiation was triggered in large measure by the revelations that the Paducah enrichment plant in Kentucky had been contaminated with plutonium⁴ and other transuranic radionuclides and that these materials may have contributed significantly to worker radiation exposure.⁵ Even if the contamination of the enrichment plants is accepted, the vast majority of the uranium, which is nonfissile uranium-238, would have to be disposed of as a waste. Proponents of nuclear power since the 1950s have dreamed that uranium-238 would be converted to fuel in "breeder reactors" which would use plutonium as a fuel, but make even more from uranium-238 - an energy system that was described as a "magical" energy source for that reason by Alvin Weinberg, the first director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

But despite $100 billion of expenditures (1996 dollars) worldwide, the combination of reprocessing and breeder reactors has never been commercialized.⁶ In fact breeder reactors have operated so erratically - some well, some poorly - that there is no realistic prospect of significant use of commercial breeders for decades. So far as reprocessing is concerned, France, which operates the most efficient of the world's commercial reprocessing plants, spends about two cents more for every kilowatt-hour generated from MOX fuel, compared to uranium fuel.

Reprocessed uranium would add to the vast amounts of depleted uranium that has been generated as a result of enriching uranium for reactor fuel. Like the United States, France has not solved either problem. In recent years, there have been calls for disposing of depleted uranium as a Class A low-level radioactive waste in shallow land burial, even though such disposal would create long-term radiation doses greatly in excess of present-day radiation protection standards.⁷ Disposal of reprocessing-derived uranium would be even worse, because it has a greater radioactivity per unit mass.

When radioactivity and biological impacts are taken into account, depleted and reprocessing-derived uranium would have to be disposed of in a deep geologic repository, as is transuranic waste. This would add to the burdens of waste disposal that have not yet been solved in any country.

Deep geologic repository

Finally, France will still need a deep geologic repository for its high-level and transuranic waste. Its repository program has faced public opposition not much different from that in the United States. For instance, France, like the United States, had planned to characterize two different repository rocks, including one in granite. When the names of the possible granite sites were announced, the public uproar caused the second repository site to be abandoned in 2000⁸, much as the U.S. granite sites were abandoned under pressure in 1986. An earlier attempt to characterize a repository had to be abandoned in the face of militant opposition from farmers who raised gourmet chickens ("poulets de Bresse") in the region.⁹ Like the United States, France is characterizing just one repository, which continues to face significant technical and political issues.

Accident and security risks

France is rightly proud of its culinary and viticultural traditions. As noted above, a part of the militant opposition to a nuclear waste repository was motivated by farmers who supply gourmet chickens designed to please particular Parisian palates. Yet, little attention has been given as to what would happen if there were to be a severe accident releasing large amounts of radioactivity, of the same order of magnitude as Chernobyl. Such an accident is less probable in France. Its reactors are of a different design, for one thing. Yet, while the mechanisms would be different and the probability is likely lower, the occurrence of such an accident would irreparably harm the finest traditions of the country. When I debated a French proponent of nuclear power in Paris in the 1990s and pointed this out, much of the audience was shocked at this realization.

Despite a larger use of plutonium fuel than any other country, France has a huge stock of surplus plutonium. As of 2005, 81 metric tons of plutonium were stockpiled at La Hague, of which about 51 metric tons belonged to France.¹⁰ France does not have much scope to expand its plutonium fuel consumption, since only eight more reactors (for a total of 28) are suitable for using MOX fuel up to 30 percent in the reactor core. The plutonium is stored in tens of thousands of containers. There is a risk of terrorist attacks either on the plutonium stocks or on the liquid high level waste tanks.

There are also proliferation risks, the most notable of which relates to Japan. France reprocesses Japanese spent fuel and has helped Japan to build and commission a large commercial reprocessing plant, Rokkasho-mura.¹¹ Japan has had ambitions to use MOX fuel in its reactors for many years, but to date has not yet used any due to a host of problems. Its breeder reactor program has also been plagued with difficulties, including a sodium fire at its Monju demonstration plant in 1995.

The temptation to weaponize stocks of surplus plutonium separated in commercial reprocessing plants was most dramatically expressed when Ichiro Ozawa, the leader of Japan's Labor Party, opined in 2002 that Japan could use its commercial nuclear assets to make thousands of nuclear weapons if China got too powerful and "inflated."¹² Overall, the security problem of surplus plutonium continues to mount. There were about 250 metric tons of surplus commercial separated plutonium around the world in 2005, with the British stock being even larger than the French - at 107 metric tons. Britain continues to reprocess though it does not have even a single reactor that is using MOX fuel. One of its two reprocessing plants suffered a large internal leak of highly radioactive material and has been closed for two years. The Keystone Center Joint Nuclear Fact-Finding (NJFF), which included nuclear industry representatives, had some rather stark cautions about reprocessing risks and about the promotion of reprocessing by the Bush administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP):

While the NJFF agrees with several premises of the GNEP, the
program is not a strategy for resolving either the radioactive waste
problem or the weapons proliferation problem. The NJFF group
agrees with the following proliferation concerns that GNEP attempts
to address:
• All grades of plutonium, regardless of the source, could be
used to make nuclear explosives and must be controlled.
• Reprocessing poses a problem in non-weapons states
Widespread use of mixed-oxide fuel by both weapons states
and non-weapons states is similarly troublesome.
• Even in the weapons states, plutonium must be protected,
and one should not increase stocks of plutonium in sep
rated or easily separated forms such as mixed-oxide fuel.

The NJFF participants believe that critical elements of the GNEP
are unlikely to succeed because:
• GNEP requires the deployment of commercial scale
reprocessing plants, and a large fraction of the U.S. and global
commercial reactor fleets would have to be fast reactors.
• To date, deployment of commercial reprocessing plants has
proven uneconomical.
• Fast reactors have proven to be uneconomical and less
reliable than conventional light-water reactors.

Although it is not its aim, the GNEP program could encourage
the development of hot cells and reprocessing R&D centers in
non-weapons states, as well as the training of cadres of experts
in plutonium chemistry and metallurgy, all of which pose a
grave proliferation risk.¹³

French nuclear decision-making

France made the decision to go massively for nuclear power in 1973, when the oil crisis pointed up the vulnerability of its electricity system, which used oil for nearly 40 percent of its generation. While nuclear power allowed France to essentially eliminate oil from its electricity sector (it has been around two percent in recent years), there was not much open debate about the merits of heavy reliance on nuclear. The opposition to nuclear power was largely overridden with rhetoric of energy independence.

But in fact France imports all of its uranium - only the nine percent or so of its nuclear electricity that is derived from plutonium can reasonably be described as using domestic fuel. And it is as dependent as ever on oil imports because of the rising use in the transportation sector. France's less than adequate public checks on the massive nuclear expansion was made much easier by the fact that it had just one electric utility, Electricité de France (EdF), that was 100 percent government-owned. Even today EdF is over 80 percent government-owned. Cogéma, the reprocessing company, was also 100 percent government owned. Today it is part of the conglomerate AREVA, which is more than 80 percent French government-owned.

Conclusions

The French model of imposing added costs on its ratepayers and taxpayers, of polluting the oceans in the face of protests from neighboring governments, and of accumulating vast amounts of domestic and foreign surplus plutonium hardly seems like a model for the United States or anyone else to follow. There is a reasonable, clear path to a renewable energy-based electricity sector that does not involve the headaches and risks of nuclear power, which is, moreover, expensive. There is not a shortage of low to zero-CO2 energy sources. There are two limitations that are much more critical:

• The amount of time we have to address the problem of drastically reducing CO2 emissions is small and shrinking.
• The amount of money is limited, so it should be applied where it will do the most good in the shortest period of time.

Nuclear plants will take many years to build. As noted in the article on nuclear power plant costs (page 1), there is a reasonable prospect that intermediate-scale solar power may make nuclear power economically obsolete in a decade or less, especially if public policies would be designed to favor it in that period instead of nuclear power. France fixed the problem of its dependence on oil for electricity generation by going massively nuclear, but in doing so, it opened a whole other can of worms. Following in France's nuclear footsteps is not nearly as appetizing as the nuclear proponents have made it out to be. Even the French are having second thoughts. Less than 31 percent of the French public favor nuclear energy as a response to today's energy crisis. 54 percent are now opposed to investing 3 billion euros in the construction of a new reactor, while 84 percent favor the development of renewable energy.¹⁴ But the French are stuck and will be for some time, since they have dug a much deeper nuclear hole for themselves proportionally than the United States.

Endnotes

1. IEER's website has a considerable number of materials relating to nuclear power in France. Under Publications, see "Low Carbon Diet without Nukes in France," "Cogéma: Above the Law", and "Plutonium End Game." Under Science for Democratic Action, see Vol. 9, No. 2; Vol. 13, No. 4; and Vol. 14, No. 2.

2. "Qu'y-a-t-il entre le déchet et l'environment" web site of the CEA at

www.cea.fr/var/plain/storage/original/application/fda10c807ffc6bb4da51cb04aaded70f.pdf

3. This fact was revealed during the discussion following the presentation of Alan Hanson, Vice-President, AREVA to the Keystone Center Nuclear Power Joint Fact-Finding, which was published in June 2007. Arjun Makhijani was a co-presenter.

4. J oby Warrick, "Paducah Workers Sue Firms Class Action Cites Radiation Exposure, Seeks $10 Billion," Washington Post, September 4, 1999.

5. PACE (Paper, Allied Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union) and University of Utah, Exposure Assessment Project at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, December 2000.

6. For details of the failure to commercialize plutonium, see Arjun Makhijani, Plutonium End Game, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Takoma Park, Maryland, 2001.

7. Arjun Makhijani and Brice Smith, Costs and Risks of Management and Disposal of Depleted Uranium from the National Enrichment Facility Proposed to be Built in Lea County New Mexico by LES, Takoma Park, MD: Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, November 24, 2004, redacted version published in February 2005 (on the Web at www.ieer.org/reports/du/lesrpt.pdf); And, Arjun Makhijani and Brice Smith, Update to Costs and Risks of Management and Disposal of Depleted Uranium from the National Enrichment Facility Proposed to be Built in Lea County New Mexico by

LES by Arjun Makhijani, PhD. and Brice Smith, Ph.D. based on information obtained since November 2004, Takoma Park, MD: Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, July 5, 2005, redacted version published August 10, 2005 (on the Web at www.ieer.org/reports/du/LESrptupdate.pdf).

8. Commission Nationale d'Evaluation relative aux recherches surla gestion des déchets radioactifs, Rapport d'évaluation # 7, June 2001.

9. L a Gazette de la Societé et des Techniques # 36, Mars 2006, on the Web at http://annales.com/gazette/Gazette_web_36bis.pdf.

10. Keystone Center, Nuclear Power Joint Fact-Finding, Keystone, CO, June 2007, page 18. On the Web at www.keystone.org/spp/documents/FinalReport_NJFF6_12_2007(1).pdf.

11. See "Rokkasho: A Troubled Nuclear Fuel Cycle Complex" by Masako Sawai in SDA Vol. 9, No. 4. On the web at www.ieer.org/sdafiles/vol_9/9-4/.

12. Reuters. Japanese nukes could counter China - politician, April 6, 2002. Dateline: Tokyo. On the Web at www.nci.org/02NCI/04/japan-articles.htm. Viewed on December 2, 2007.

13. Keystone Center, p. 18.

14. www.actu-environnement.com/ae/news/1872.php4

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