Publication - May 30, 2006
Since the origins of the French nuclear industry some 50 years ago, the management of nuclear waste has been largely neglected. Even today, large quantities of waste remain in unconditioned and unstable form, inventories of historical dump sites are lacking or were lost and one of the largest dump sites in the world near the La Hague reprocessing plant is leaking into the underground water. Now evidence is emerging that a new nuclear dumpsite in the Champagne region of France is leaking radioactivity into the ground water threatening contamination of tritium and at a later stage other radionuclides. The French nuclear waste authority ANDRA has only a partial inventory of the multitude of existing waste categories, as large quantities have not yet been declared by the main waste producers EDF and Cogema, including spent nuclear fuel or waste from the uranium enrichment industry. Even French government regulators are expressing their concerns over the conditions at both dump sites.