Court-circuiter le transport électrique (French Edition)

In December the government's Atomic Energy Committee decided to proceed with a Generation IV sodium-cooled fast reactor prototype whose design features are to be decided by and the start up aimed for A new generation of sodium-cooled fast reactor with innovations intended to improve the competitiveness and the safety of this reactor type is the reference approach for this prototype.

A gas-cooled fast reactor design is to be developed in parallel as an alternative option. The prototype will also have the mission of demonstrating advanced recycling modes intended to improve the ultimate high-level and long-lived waste to be disposed of. The objective is to have one type of competitive fast reactor technology ready for industrial deployment in France and for export after The project will be led by the CEA. Normally base-load generating plants, with high capital cost and low operating cost, are run continuously, since this is the most economic mode.

But also it is technically the simplest way, since nuclear and coal-fired plants cannot readily alter power output, compared with gas or hydro plants. The high reliance on nuclear power in France thus poses some technical challenges, since the reactors collectively need to be used in load-following mode.

Since electricity cannot be stored, generation output must exactly equal to consumption at all times.

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Any change in demand or generation of electricity at a given point on the transmission network has an instant impact on the entire system. RTE , a subsidiary of EdF, is responsible for operating, maintaining and developing the French electricity transmission network. France has the biggest grid network in Europe, made up of some , km of high and extra high voltage lines, and 44 cross-border lines, including a DC link to UK.

Electricity is transmitted regionally at and kilovolts. Frequency and voltage are controlled from the national control centre, but dispatching of capacity is done regionally. Due to its central geographical position, RTE is a crucial entity in the European electricity market and a critical operator in maintaining its reliability.

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All France's nuclear capacity is from PWR units. There are two ways of varying the power output from a PWR: Using normal control rods to reduce power means that there is a portion of the core where neutrons are being absorbed rather than creating fission, and if this is maintained it creates an imbalance in the fuel, with the lower part of the fuel assemblies being more reactive that the upper parts.

Adding boron to the water diminishes the reactivity uniformly, but to reverse the effect the water has to be treated to remove the boron, which is slow and costly, and it creates a radioactive waste. So to minimise these impacts since the s EdF has used in each PWR reactor some less absorptive 'grey' control rods which weigh less from a neutronic point of view than ordinary control rods and they allow sustained variation in power output. This means that RTE can depend on flexible load following from the nuclear fleet to contribute to regulation in these three respects:. PWR plants are very flexible at the beginning of their cycle, with fresh fuel and high reserve reactivity.

So at the very end of the cycle, they are run at steady power output and do not regulate or load-follow until the next refueling outage. RTE has continuous oversight of all French plants and determines which plants adjust output in relation to the three considerations above, and by how much. RTE's real-time picture of the whole French system operating in response to load and against predicted demand shows the total of all inputs. This includes the hydro contribution at peak times, but it is apparent that in a coordinated system the nuclear fleet is capable of a degree of load following, even though the capability of individual units to follow load may be limited.

Plants being built today, eg according to European Utilities' Requirements EUR , have load-following capacity fully built in. France uses some 12, tonnes of uranium oxide concentrate 10, tonnes of U per year for its electricity generation. Areva perceives the front end of the French fuel cycle as strategic, and invests accordingly. Beyond this, it is self-sufficient and has conversion, enrichment, uranium fuel fabrication and MOX fuel fabrication plants operational together with reprocessing and a waste management program.

Most fuel cycle activities are carried out by Areva. In May Areva NC announced plans for a new conversion project — Comurhex II — expanding and modernising the facilities at Malvesi and Pierrelatte near Tricastin to strengthen its global position in the front end of the fuel cycle. In January EdF awarded a long-term conversion contract to Areva. At the start of Comurhex I had an inventory of three years' worth of sales, from which customers would be supplied between the closure of Comhurhex I and the opening of Comurhex II. In September , Orano stated that Comurhex II would commence industrial production in , and ramp up to full capacity over several years.

From it is expected that the facility will have a capacity of tonnes per year and will have an annual output tonnes. Construction is due to be completed in , at which point the facility will reach its full capacity of 15, tonnes per year. Orano stated in September that EDF is committed to buy about one-third of the total output, with the balance mainly sold under long-term contracts to about 70 utilities in the USA, China, South Korea and several European countries. Areva has undertaken deconversion of enrichment tails at Pierrelatte since the s.

It ran at about half capacity using about MWe until mid and then closed down, as replacement capacity at Georges Besse II reached 1. The plant delivered more than million SWU, or 35, t of enriched product in 33 years. The final agreement after approval by the four governments involved was signed in mid The new Georges Besse II enrichment plant at Tricastin was officially opened in December and commenced commercial operation in April The south plant started construction in , commenced operation in , and reached full capacity of 4.

Construction of the north plant began in with first production in March , and was fully operational at the end of with 3. Most production from GBII was contracted as of It runs over 17 years to , corresponding with the amortisation of the new plant. About tonnes of depleted uranium tails is produced annually, most of which is stored for use in Generation IV fast reactors.

Only tonnes per year is used in MOX. By this resources is expected to total some , tonnes of DU. Enrichment of depleted uranium tails has been undertaken in Russia, at Novouralsk and Zelenogorsk. Some 33, tonnes of French DU from Areva and EdF has been sent to Russia in shipments over , and about t of enriched 'natural' uranium about 0. The contracts for this work end in , and the last shipment was in July with the returned material to be shipped by year end. Tails from re-enrichment remain in Russia as the property of the enrichers. Fuel fabrication is at several Areva plants in France and Belgium.

Significant upgrading of these plants forms part of Areva's strategy for strengthening its front end facilities. MOX fuel fabrication and use of reprocessed uranium is described below. The JV will develop, fabricate and commercialize fuel assemblies based on metallic fuel technology. Commercial sales of the fuel are expected by France chose the closed fuel cycle at the very beginning of its nuclear program, involving reprocessing used fuel so as to recover uranium and plutonium for re-use and to reduce the volume of high-level wastes for disposal. Overall the closed fuel cycle cost is assessed as comparable with that for direct disposal of used fuel, and preserves a resource which may become more valuable in the future.

Back end services are carried out by Areva. Used fuel storage in pools at reactor sites is relatively brief. Total in storage was 14, tonnes. Used fuel from the French reactors and from other countries is sent to Areva's La Hague plant in Normandy for reprocessing. This has the capacity to reprocess up to tonnes per year of used fuel in the UP2 and UP3 facilities, and had reprocessed 28, tonnes to the end of The treatment extracts Typical input today is 3. The rest is preserved for later reprocessing to provide the plutonium required for the start-up of Generation IV reactors.

Reprocessing is undertaken a few years after discharge, following some cooling. At the end of , there were 80 tonnes of civilian plutonium in storage in France, 60 t of it at La Hague. Of the total, 56 t belonged to French entities, and 27 t to EdF. These discharges earlier amounted to about tonnes per year, but rose to tonnes from Used MOX fuel is not reprocessed at present. EdF used it in the Cruas MWe power reactors from the mids to The main RepU inventory — 24, tonnes at four sites at the end of but only 16, tonnes at the end of — constitutes a strategic resource, and EdF intends to increase its utilization significantly.

The enrichment tails remain at Seversk, as the property of the enricher. It is the reason why the cost of these operations may be higher than for natural uranium. However, taking into account the credit from recycled materials natural uranium savings , commercial grade RepU fuel is competitive and its cost is more predictable than that of fresh uranium fuel, due to uncertainty about future uranium concentrate prices.

In May Framatome signed a contract to design, fabricate and supply fuel assemblies using enriched reprocessed uranium to EDF between and In Europe 35 reactors have been loaded with MOX fuel. Contracts for MOX fuel supply were signed in with Japanese utilities. However, EdF has priority. To the end of Melox had produced about tonnes of MOX fuel. In it produced tonnes. In addition to LWR fuel, about tonnes of gas-cooled reactor natural uranium fuel was earlier reprocessed at La Hague, and over 18, tonnes was reprocessed at the UP1 plant for such fuel at Marcoule, which closed in At the end of Areva and EdF announced a renewed agreement to reprocess and recycle EdF's used fuel to , thereby securing the future of both La Hague and Melox plants, though prices were not specified past The base terms for the period were in a agreement that increased volumes of used LWR fuel to about 1, tonnes and MOX fuel to tonnes per year.

France's back-end strategy and industrial developments are to evolve progressively in line with future needs and technological developments. The existing plants at La Hague commissioned around have been designed to operate for at least forty years, so with operational and technical improvements taking place on a continuous basis they are expected to be operating until around This will be when Generation IV plants reactors and advanced treatment facilities should come on line.

All three processes are to be assessed as they develop, and one or more will be selected for industrial-scale development with the construction of pilot plants.

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In the longer term the goal is to have integral recycling of uranium, plutonium and minor actinides. In practical terms, a technology — hopefully GANEX or similar — will need to be validated for industrial deployment of Gen IV fast reactors about , at which stage the present La Hague plant will be due for replacement. Another laboratory is researching granites.

Research is also being undertaken on partitioning and transmutation, and long-term surface storage of wastes following conditioning. Wastes are to be retrievable from the repository. ANDRA publishes a waste inventory every two years and reports to government so that parliament can decide on waste policy. This formally declared deep geological disposal as the reference solution for high-level and long-lived radioactive wastes, and set as the target date for licensing a repository and for opening it. It also affirmed the principle of reprocessing used fuel and using recycled plutonium and uranium "in order to reduce the quantity and toxicity" of final wastes, and called for construction of a prototype fourth-generation reactor by to test transmutation of long-lived actinides.

Funds for waste management and decommissioning remain segregated but with the producers, rather than in an external fund. ANDRA is expected to lodge a construction licence application in , start construction in , and commence the pilot phase of disposal in More than half the total cost is expected to be construction, and one-quarter for operation over years.

The Waste Management Act defined three main principles concerning radioactive waste and substances: A central point is the creation of a national management plan defining the solutions, the goals to be achieved and the research actions to be launched to reach these goals. This plan is updated every three years and published according to the law on nuclear transparency and security.

The Act was largely in line with recommendations to government from the CNE following 15 years of research. Their report identified the clay formation at Bure as the best site, but was sceptical of partitioning and transmutation for high-level wastes, and said that used MOX fuel should be stored indefinitely as a plutonium resource for future fast neutron reactors, rather than being recycled now or treated as waste. Wastes from transmutation reactors will be in interim storage for at least 70 years. Earlier, an international review team reported very positively on the plan by ANDRA for a deep geological repository complex in clay at Bure.

In ANDRA was authorised to build an underground research laboratory at Bure to prepare for disposal of vitrified high-level wastes HLW and long-lived intermediate-level wastes. A construction permit application is expected in , with construction from Only standard universal canisters will be used, and all fuel will be recycled.

It opened in and benefited from the experience gained at Centre da la Manche. It is operated by an Areva subsidiary. This is 70, m 3 18, tonnes of graphite from early gas-cooled reactors and 47, m 3 of radium-bearing materials from manufacture of catalytic converters and electronic components, as well as wastes from mineral and metal processing that cannot be placed in Andra's low-level waste disposal center in Soulaines.

In response, 40 communities put themselves forward for consideration. A repository is likely to be in clay, about 15 metres below the land surface. EdF sets aside 0. Thirteen experimental and power reactors are being decommissioned in France, nine of them first-generation gas-cooled, graphite-moderated types, six being very similar to the UK Magnox type. There are well-developed plans for dismantling these which have been shut down since or before and work is progressing. However, completion awaits the availability of sites for disposing of the intermediate-level wastes and the alpha-contaminated graphite from the early gas-cooled reactors.

At least one of these, Marcoule G2, has been fully dismantled. A licence was issued for dismantling Brennilis in , and for Chooz A in EdF points to Chooz A as the most representative plant of those currently operating, and dismantling work on it is on schedule for completion in and on budget. In April ASN issued a draft policy on decommissioning which proposes that French nuclear installation licensees adopt "immediate dismantling strategies" rather than safe storage followed by much later dismantling.

The policy foresees broad public information in connection with the decommissioning process. This will push back the timeline by several decades. Organisation and financing of final decommissioning of the UP1 reprocessing plant at Marcoule was settled in , with the Atomic Energy Commission CEA taking it over. The plant was closed in after 39 years of operation, primarily for military purposes but also taking the spent fuel from EdF's early gas-cooled power reactors.

The total expected cost is periodically re-evaluated, and EDF puts aside an amount related to the total estimated cost, the actualisation cost and the expected lifetime of the plants. In January France's Court of Audit released a report on the costs of nuclear power in the country.

However, the court noted that these future costs estimates are tentative because of the lack of firm decommissioning costs and the lack of final disposal plans. A massive increase in future costs would have a "significant but limited" impact on the annual cost of electricity production, it said. In January a parliamentary committee reported: EdF responded that it "assumes full responsibility for the technical and financial aspects of dismantling its nuclear plants," and noted that it was currently decommissioning nine reactors, so had a good basis of experience.

It also pointed out that its funds set aside for decommissioning were audited by the Ministry of the Environment, Energy and the Sea the previous month. However, its major licensing decisions will still need government approval. In October , soon after commissioning, about 50 kg of fuel melted in unit 1, and in March some annealing occurred in the graphite of unit 2, causing a brief heat excursion. On each occasion the reactor was repaired, and the two were eventually taken out of service in and The CEA has 14 research reactors of various types and sizes in operation, all started up to , the largest of these being the 70 MWt Osiris at Saclay, which started up in for material and fuel testing, and is now being decommissioned.

About 17 units dating from to are shut down or decommissioning. About half of these operating reactors use high-enriched fuel. Previously this had used fuel sourced from Russia. In the US energy secretary signed an agreement with the French Atomic Energy Commission CEA to gain access to the Phenix experimental fast neutron reactor for research on nuclear fuels. The US research with Phenix irradiated fuel loaded with various actinides under constant conditions to help identify what kind of fuel might be best for possible future waste transmutation systems.

Both would have fuel recycling. It noted that China and India are aiming for high breeding ratios to produce enough plutonium to crank up a major push into fast reactors.

It was initially envisaged as a MWe prototype of a commercial series of MWe SFR reactors which were planned to be deployed from about These would consume the plutonium in used MOX fuel and utilise the half million tonnes of depleted uranium DU that France will have by Over experiments with Brayton cycle gas turbine technology driven by nitrogen were carried out with the CEA.

Four independent heat exchanger loops are likely, and it will be designed to reduce the probability and consequences of severe accidents to an extent that is not now done with FNRs. Astrid is called a 'self-generating' fast reactor rather than a breeder in order to demonstrate low net plutonium production. Astrid is designed to meet the criteria of the Generation IV International Forum in terms of safety, economy and proliferation resistance.

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CEA plans to build it at Marcoule. In December it approved moving to the design phase, with a final decision on construction to be made in The six-year conceptual design was finished in The basic design phase runs to , with 14 industrial partners. The CEA is responsible for the project and will design the reactor core and fuel, but will collaborate with Areva, which would design the nuclear steam supply system, the nuclear auxiliaries and the instrumentation and control system.

Japanese partners are playing a major role since The Astrid programme includes development of the reactor itself and associated fuel cycle facilities: Fuel rods containing actinides for transmutation were scheduled to be produced from , though fuel containing minor actinides would not be loaded for transmutation in Astrid before All the dates appear to have slipped, and with a decision in , construction could start in and operation about In June the French government stated that Astrid will have its capacity scaled down from the initially planned MWe to between and MWe to reduce construction costs and also due to development of a commercial fast reactor no longer being a high priority.

Following the decision, Toshiba said that the smaller Astrid would be a step back for Japan's fast reactor development process, possibly forcing the country to build its own larger demonstration reactor in Japan rather than rely on Astrid. In that process, minor actinides are separated out from used fuel in an advanced-technology reprocessing plant and then incorporated into blanket assemblies which are placed around the core of a future fast reactor.

In homogeneous recycling, the actinides are incorporated into the actual fuel. The second line of FNR development is the gas-cooled fast reactor. A MWt experimental version — Allegro — is envisaged to be built by The secondary circuit will be pressurized water.

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Further detail in Fast Neutron Reactors paper. In June the CEA signed a major framework agreement with Rosatom covering "nuclear energy development strategy, nuclear fuel cycle, development of next-generation reactors, future gas coolant reactor systems, radiation safety and nuclear material safety, prevention and emergency measures.

CEA has two priorities in this area:. Constituent, notamment, une modification substantielle de l'installation de production au sens de l'article D. Ecart maximal de tension: Ecart maximal de phase: Dispositions finales et transitoires Article 33 Article 34 Article Article 1 En savoir plus sur cet article Article 2 En savoir plus sur cet article Article 3 En savoir plus sur cet article Article 4 En savoir plus sur cet article Article 5 En savoir plus sur cet article Article 6 En savoir plus sur cet article Article 7 En savoir plus sur cet article Article 8 En savoir plus sur cet article Article 9 En savoir plus sur cet article Article 10 En savoir plus sur cet article Article 11 En savoir plus sur cet article Article 12 En savoir plus sur cet article Article 13 En savoir plus sur cet article Article 14 En savoir plus sur cet article Article 15 En savoir plus sur cet article Article 16 En savoir plus sur cet article