Developments in France Concerning a Deep-Underground Laboratory
The Reseau "Sortir du nucléaire," a federation of safe energy organizations based in Lyon, France, has obtained a hitherto confidential list of sites selected as potential hosts of a laboratory to study the burial of long-lived and highly-radioactive waste deep underground in a granite formation in France.
The sites, chosen by Andra (Agence Nationale pour la gestion des Déchets Radioactifs), the national waste management agency, are le Finistère (canton de Huelgoat), les Cotes d'Armor (cantons de Plouaret, Quintin, Dinan), l'Orne (canton de Athis), la Mayenne (canton d'Izé), la Vienne (canton de St Barbant Port-de-Salle), la Haute Vienne (canton d'Auriat), la Creuse (canton de Crocq-Sernöel), la Corrèze (canton de St Julien Le Vendornois), le Cantal (canton de Glénat), l'Aveyron (canton de Sanvensa), la Dordogne (canton de Piegut-Pluviers), la Vendée (canton d'Avrillé), les Deux-Sévres (canton de Neuvy-Boin).
According to the Reseau or network, the list has existed "for several weeks," but, as of its press release, 27 January, the communities concerned had not yet been notified that they are under consideration.
In November the government appointed three experts to a mission to discuss the planned laboratory with elected officials, organizations, and other residents of the areas under consideration. The mission is composed of a mining engineer, an agricultural engineer, and a member of the Conseil d'Etat, the French equivalent of the US Supreme Court. The government is scheduled to choose a granite site for a laboratory by the end of the year but can do so only after the mission reports to the government on the results of its consultations.
According to the law of 30 December 1991 on the disposal of high-level and long-lived waste, Andra is to construct at least two deep underground laboratories. The government is to decide in 2006 whether to turn one of the laboratories into an actual disposal site. In August of last year the government issued a decree finalizing the chose of Bure (Meuse) for a laboratory in a clay formation. It rejected Andra's initial nomination for a site in granite, at La Chapelle-Baton (Vienne), as being unsatisfactory from a geological point of view; and asked Andra to initiate the current selection process for another and more suitable site. Site preparation and environmental monitoring at Bure are already underway.
Opponents of the deep underground burial of waste accuse the government of buying laboratory sites. In point of fact, the government will make 60 million francs (about $10 million dollars) a year available to an organization that will be set up to manage projects of "economic accompaniment" for the area around the Bure site; and during the process leading up to the final selection of Bure it spent lavishly in Bure and the other areas that were final candidates for a laboratory. Financial matters will be among the topics that the three-man mission on the granite sites will discuss with residents of the areas under consideration.
Yggdrasil Institute's France Nucléaire
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