ASN Report 2018

NORMANDIE REGIONAL OVERVIEWOF NUCLEAR SAFETY AND RADIATION PROTECTION kinetics, this could lead the licensee to stop its operation around 2020. Evaporator monitoring will remain a subject of particular attention for ASN until the new evaporators replacing the current ones are put into service. In November 2016, ASN gave an opinion on the safety options presented by the licensee for new fission product evaporators. In November 2017, it authorised construction of the civil engineering structures of the new buildings that are to house the evaporators, and it inspected the construction worksites in 2018. ASN considers themonitoring of the service providers to be satisfactory. Orano Cycle must submit the application for authorisation to use these new evaporators to ASN in 2019. La Hague Orano Cycle reprocessing plants undergoing decommissioning  UP2‑400 irradiated fuel reprocessing plant The former UP2‑400 plant (BNI 33) was commissioned in 1966 and has been definitively shut down since 1 January 2004. Final shutdown also concerns the three BNIs associated with the UP2‑400 plant: BNI 38 (STE2 installation and AT1 facility), BNI 47 (ELAN IIB facility) and BNI 80 (HAO facility). The ongoing operations in the four BNIs concern the retrieval and packaging of legacy waste and decommissioning. Retrieval and packaging of legacy waste Unlike the direct on-line packaging of the waste generated by the new UP2-800 and UP3-A plants at La Hague, most of the waste generated by the first UP2-400 plant was stored in bulk without permanent packaging. The operations to retrieve this waste are technically delicate and necessitate substantial means. They present major safety and radiation risks, which ASNmonitors with particular attention. The retrieval of the waste contained in the old storage facilities on the La Hague site is also a precondition for the decommissioning and clean-out of these storage facilities. Over the years, retrieval of this waste has fallen considerably behind the initial schedule and continued to do so in recent years. ASN considers that any pushing back of deadlines must be justified by Orano Cycle and accompanied by compensatory measures that enable the risk to be reduced to the lowest level possible, because the buildings in which this legacy waste is stored are ageing and do not meet current safety standards. ASN considers in particular that Orano Cycle must retrieve the legacy waste produced by operation of the UP2-400 facility as quickly as possible, and more specifically the sludges stored in the STE2 silos, the waste from the HAO and 130 silos, and continue the processing of the fission product solutions stored in the SPF2 unit. ASN has regulated all the legacy waste retrieval and packaging programmes at La Hague through prescriptions stipulated in resolution 2014-DC-0472 of 9 December 2014. This resolution defines priorities in terms of the safety of the legacy waste retrieval and packaging operations and sets milestones for each of the programmes concerned. STE2 The scenario presented in 2010 concerning the retrieval and packaging of STE2 sludges is divided into three steps: •  retrieval of sludges stored in silos in STE2 (BNI 38); •  transfer and processing, initially by drying and compacting, in STE3 (BNI 118); •  packaging of the resulting pellets in «C5 » packages for deep geological disposal. Diagram of an evaporator and details of the half-tubes of the heating circuit 68  ASN report on the state of nuclear safety and radiation protection in France in 2018