Marcoule Nuclear Plant
| Marcoule Nuclear Plant | ||
|---|---|---|
Marcoule Nuclear Plant |
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| location | ||
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| Coordinates | 44 ° 8 '34 " N , 4 ° 42' 22" E | |
| country | France | |
| Data | ||
| owner | Areva / CEA | |
| operator | Areva / CEA | |
The Marcoule nuclear facility is a nuclear facility on the Rhone , about 30 kilometers north of Avignon in the French region of Occitania .
Three reactors from the Marcoule nuclear power plant (until 1984), two heavy water reactors for the French hydrogen bomb program (until 2009) and the breeder reactor prototype Phénix (until 2010) were previously in operation on the site of the plant . Today cleaning and dismantling of the facilities, reprocessing of fuel elements and research are still taking place there. After the La Hague reprocessing plant , the one in Marcoule is the second largest French center for the treatment of radioactive waste .
operator
With the decision of France at the time of de Gaulle , nuclear power , had to methods of preparing to become plutonium to be developed. To this end, the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique (CEA, French for 'Commissariat for Atomic Energy') founded a production center in 1955, on which two reactors were initially built in the following years. They were operated by the energy company Électricité de France (EDF).
In 1976 the company Cogema (syllable abbreviation from Compagnie Générale des Matières Nucléaires , German: 'Allgemeine Gesellschaft für Nuklear-Material') emerged from part of the CEA and took over the operation of the nuclear plant. In 2001, Cogema and other companies formed the Areva group , which works closely with the CEA as an industrial partner. Areva itself belongs to the French state through several holdings.
Individual facilities
Marcoule Nuclear Power Plant
The first UNGG reactor in this nuclear power plant went into operation in 1956, followed by another in 1959 and 1960. They were used to produce weapons- grade plutonium for the first French nuclear weapons and also supplied electricity to the commercial power grid .
The oldest unit was shut down in 1968 and 1980, and the third reactor was also shut down in 1984.
Reprocessing plant UP 1
From 1958 to 1992, the UP1 reprocessing plant separated weapons-grade plutonium from the fuel elements of the three reactors of the Marcoule nuclear power plant by means of solvent extraction . The total yield was estimated to be more than 2.5 tons. The dismantling of the plant began in 1998.
Celestin reactors
In 1967 and 1968 the two heavy water reactors Celestin 1 and 2 went into operation, which produced tritium for the French program for the development of hydrogen bombs , and which could also manufacture plutonium in a weaponized manner ( see also: Force de frappe ). They were shut down in 2009.
Phénix nuclear power plant
A breeder reactor had been in operation in this power plant since December 1973, with interruptions of several years from 1990. This fast breeder was the prototype for the later built Superphénix , several hundred kilometers upstream, and after its shutdown it was converted again for research purposes and operated in 2004 until it was shut down in February 2010.
MOX fuel assemblies
The recycling plant for fuel elements Melox , which was planned from 1985, built from 1990 and went into operation in 1995, has developed into the world market leader in this segment to this day. It supplies the MOX fuel elements for French, German and other foreign light water reactors . The plutonium required for this now comes from the La Hague reprocessing plant.
Marcoule glazing company
From 1978 until its closure in 1999, a total of 1900 m³ of high-level radioactive waste (HAW) was packed in glass canisters in this operation (see also HAW glazing ).
Other facilities
There is also the Atalanta research laboratory and the Centraco plant (syllable abbreviation from center nucléaire de traitement et de conditionnement des déchets faiblement radioactifs , in German 'Nuclear center for the treatment and reprocessing of low-level radioactive material') of the Society for Packaging Waste and Industrial Wastewater in the nuclear facility ( Socodei ).
Known incidents
On September 12, 2011, a furnace exploded on the premises of the Centraco plant inside the nuclear facility, in which, according to the French nuclear safety authority ASN, one person was killed and four others were injured. No radioactivity was released. The media falsely reported that the accident was linked to the nuclear reactor on the site. The cause of the explosion was unknown.
See also
Web links
- Greenpeace France: Dossier Marcoule, February 2003 (PDF; 75 kB)
- CEA on the Marcoule nuclear facility (French)
- Greenpeace France: Marcoule dossier, February 2003 (online)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Areva website: History plant of Marcoule (English)
- ↑ Power Reactor Information System of the IAEA : France (French Republic): Nuclear Power Reactors (English)
- ↑ nuclearweaponarchive.org: France Facilities (English)
- ↑ Roland Kollert: The politics of latent proliferation: military use of "peaceful" nuclear technology in Western Europe , DUV, 1994, page 221f.
- ↑ http://www.areva.com/EN/operations-3130/history-the-plant-of-marcoule.html
- ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung: General store for nuclear technology, September 12, 2011
- ^ Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire: Incident in Centraco (Gard) ended (press release of 12.09.2011). Archived from the original on October 12, 2011 ; accessed on December 30, 2019 (English).
- ↑ Tageschau: Explosion in a nuclear power plant. September 12, 2011, accessed January 2, 2020 .
- ↑ FOCUS.de: Nuclear supervision gives the all-clear after the explosion. September 12, 2011, accessed January 2, 2020 .