Containers for the storage of HL and IL-LL waste

High-level radioactive waste (HLW) and long-lived intermediate-level radioactive waste (ILW) from the French nuclear power industry and the activities of the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) are stored at the sites where the waste was produced or consolidated (see waste classification in article [BN 3 660] ). Some of this waste is in conditioned form, constituting "primary waste packages". Other waste products need to be conditioned.

Reversible deep geological disposal

The French Program Law no. 2006-739 of June 28, 2006 defines the terms and conditions for the sustainable management of this waste, which cannot be stored for safety or radiological protection reasons at surface or shallow depths: after storage, it will be disposed of in deep geological formations, in accordance with the principle of reversibility. The reversibility period cannot be less than one hundred years. The commissioning of a reversible deep geological repository is scheduled for 2025. The stages leading up to commissioning include the submission of a request for authorization in 2015, presented by the French national agency for radioactive waste management (Andra).

The law stipulates that only a site that has been previously studied by means of an underground laboratory can host such a repository. Andra operates an underground research laboratory in the commune of Bure, on the border between the Meuse and Haute-Marne departments. The laboratory is used to characterize a geological zone covering 250 km ² . Research carried out since 1992 culminated in 2005 in the submission of a dossier concluding that storage in a clay layer (Callovo-Oxfordian) in this zone was feasible in principle [1] . It is therefore in this area that the installation of underground storage facilities is being studied.

The design of storage containers for HA and MAVL waste

The dossier submitted by Andra in 2005 shows that the primary packages produced at this stage by nuclear operators (see article [BN 3 668] ) are generally unsuitable for...