Management and disposal of short-lived waste in a large programme (France) Original Research Article

The long-term management of radioactive wastes is a key part of the French nuclear programme. A public organisation, the National Radioactive Waste Management Agency (ANDRA), is in charge of such management. The approach adopted in France is to dispose of solid or solidified short-lived wastes of low and intermediate activity in surface land disposal using the principle of multiple barriers throughout the period necessary for the radioactivity to decay to a level at which it is no longer hazardous to the environment. Two centres of this type have been established, the first—the `La Mancheʹ Disposal Centre—has received over 500 000 m3 of waste during the 25 years of its operation from 1969 to 1994. The `Aubeʹ Disposal Centre, designed to accommodate 1 million m3, has now taken over. ANDRA has established an integrated management system covering every stage of conditioning, transporting and disposing the different types of waste produced. The aim of this system is to guarantee safety at acceptable cost by minimising the environmental impact and the overall operating constraints.