"Waste, the Nuclear Nightmare," a documentary by Eric Guéret and Laure Noualhat, produced by Arte France and Bonne pioche. Demain, 20h45, Arte.

    The fruit of eight months investigation in France, the United States and Russia, the documentary by filmmaker Eric Guéret and our Libération colleague Laure Noualhat (1) retraces the unrecognized and often opaque circuit of radioactive waste generated by the nuclear industry with meticulous care. Apart from the revelations concerning EDF's uranium for reprocessing stockpiled in Russia (see below), the investigation also plunges into the roots of the military, then civilian, nuclear energy sector and shows its still-appreciable consequences on certain American and Russian sites, drawing on the expertise of CRIIRAD (Commission de recherche et d’information indépendantes sur la radioactivité [Commission for Independent Research and Information on Radioactivity]).

Also see below:     
Laurent Joffrin | Silence    â€¢
Our Nuclear Waste Is Hidden in Siberia    â€¢

    (1) It is also publishing the book drawn from this investigation. "Le Seuil," Arte, 212 pp., 18 €.

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    Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.

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Silence

Monday 12 October 2009

by: Laurent Joffrin  |  Visit article original @ Libération

    The cult of secrecy is decided inscribed in the genes of the nuclear industry. Certainly, much progress has been accomplished in that domain under militant and democratic pressure. Certainly, the facts that we reveal were not the object of any organized and absolute deceit, but rather of a lie by omission. However, finally, thanks to the investigation by Laure Noualhat, to director Eric Guéret and to the film that Arte is devoting to the subject, we learn that France is subcontracting the storage of nuclear waste to Russia, waste that is supposed to be recycled and reused, but is not. Officially, close to 100 percent of the waste produced by the civil atom is recyclable. In fact, a significant proportion of fissile material is cluttering up the channels of the electro-nuclear industry - which doesn't know what to do with it. Hence, the mixture of opacity and complexity which has led EDF to resort to Russian cooperation for taking care of the excess waste. Thousands of kilometers of transport, open air storage, a forbidden city, a risk that is evaluated at zero because it is incurred in the middle of faraway Siberia, although thousands of people live nearby, the Moscow authorities organized secrecy and EDF's official silence: Once again, the outmoded cocktail offered by the French national company expresses a semi-democratic culture that abhors transparency. Consequently, it's time for EDF's spokespeople to respond to the questions that may legitimately be posed in Russia and France. Unless someone wants to end up deploying a very Chernobylian cloud along these astonishing circuits.

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    Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.

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Our Nuclear Waste Is Hidden in Siberia

Monday 12 October 2009

by: Laure Noualhat  |  Visit article original @ Libération

     Broadcast tomorrow night on Arte, documentary filmmaker Eric Guéret and our journalist Laure Noualhat show that certain French radioactive wastes, far from being recycled, are abandoned in Russia.

    For years, the nuclear industry has been presenting itself as a recyclable industry, in which, they assert to us, 96 percent of radioactive materials are reused. A figure to make the most polluting industries blanch with envy. Thus is the nuclear field considered a clean, recycling industry, operating in a virtually closed circuit, and which, on top of all that, assures France energy independence. The reality is a horse of a different color. And the splendid nuclear circuit in fact experiences huge leaks. Today, close to 13 percent of the radioactive matter produced by our nuclear industry sleeps somewhere in the deepest depths of Siberia. Specifically in Tomsk-7 atomic complex, a secret city of 30,000 residents, forbidden to journalists. There, every year since the middle of the 1990s, 108 tons of depleted uranium from French nuclear reactors arrives in containers that are lined up in a huge open air parking lot.

    How and why did we get to this? To understand, it's necessary to trace the origins of the French nuclear retreatment field. In the course of chain reactions, the fuel, constituted mainly of uranium bars, produces a little bit of plutonium, but also "final waste." Consequently, EDF pays Areva to reprocess the used fuel from EDF's reactors at the La Hague factory in La Manche. There, the final wastes that cannot be further processed (4 percent of volume), then plutonium (1 percent) and processed uranium (the remaining 95 percent) are separated out. Areva assures that the plutonium and reprocessed uranium are reusable, which represents the famous 96 percent rate of recycling. The facts are more complicated.

    On boats, in trains

    Plutonium is, in fact, reinjected into the fuel cycle, but at very low rates. By mixing it with depleted uranium, a new fuel is obtained, MOX (an abbreviation for "mixture of oxides") that partially feeds 22 of the 58 French reactors. As for reprocessed uranium, only 10 percent of it can be reused. To reintroduce it into the reactor core, it must be especially enriched. That's a process that occurs today in Russia, since France does not have the technology. "The Eurodif site in the Drôme, which is Areva's enrichment factory, does not have the specific production line that would allow that operation," explains Mycle Schneider, an international energy consultant. Consequently, Areva sends part of the reprocessed uranium 8,000 kilometers away from France, to Siberia.

    The containers leave on a boat from Le Havre for Saint Petersburg, are then loaded onto a train to be processed in the Tomsk-7 atomic complex. Once there, the reprocessed uranium is re-enriched, which produces material reusable by EDF - 10 percent of the total volume - and highly depleted uranium - 90 percent of the volume - which is called uranium tailings and becomes the property of the Russian company Tenex. It's that uranium which is stored in the big, open air parking lots. In its present state, it's not very dangerous ... unless an airplane were to crash into the containers: that would disperse radioactive material into the environment.

    The French industrial companies in the sector, Areva and EDF, reject the idea that they leave radioactive wastes for the Russians. According to them, this depleted material may be reused; it is "recoverable." And at Borloo, in the administrative section for energy and climate, they catalog the multiple uses that it may be put to. "It's possible to add plutonium and make MOX. And when fourth generation reactors are finalized, in 2040 if everything goes well, we'll be able to reuse it," they assert. EDF, in fact, considers that this last option "represents the most significant potential for reuse given that uranium tailings constitute the natural fuel for that technology." So, we'll meet in 2040, then.

    A hellish problem

    A number of experts and ecologists consider the utilization of the depleted uranium stored in Russia unlikely because this material is like a twice-pressed orange: it supplies barely any more juice. "Theoretically, tailings may be used to manufacture nuclear fuel, but in practice, the Russians don't do it," asserts Vladimir Tchouprov, who is responsible for Greenpeace's energy campaign in Russia. "This product is a pollutant and contains very little uranium 235. It's a hellish problem to use it. As far as we're concerned, it's a final waste product." Russian ecologists believe Areva is sending noxious wastes that have no market value at present into Russia. "The French are sending material of which only a small part, about 10 percent is actually reutilized. Is that worth it? De facto, they dump 90 percent of their waste," deplores the Russian ecologist.

    "The term 'dump' is not appropriate," retorts Areva spokesperson Jacques-Emmanuel Saulnier. "The established international practice is as follows: the enriched material is returned to the client [in the present instance, EDF] and the depleted material is returned to the enriching site. But it is true that the technology could improve. For the moment, we are technologically obligated to separate the materials. Soon, we won't have to."

    This transfer of radioactive materials poses different questions: the security of their transport over 8,000 kilometers, the security of their storage and the effectiveness of their reprocessing. Therefore, as we wait for the hypothetical technological leaps to come, the closed cycle of French nuclear material seeps out into Russia. In complete opacity.

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    Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.

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