A proven policy for spent fuel management

Spent fuel management has been for years and remains today a major issue for many nuclear utilities throughout the world. Indeed a comprehensive spent fuel and waste management strategy, together with the safe operation of the reactors, and an effective public acceptance policy are among the top priorities for the country and/or the utilities willing to implement and maintain a successful nuclear power program. France has already walked a long way on the nuclear energy path, and its achievements in these important topics are generally regarded as satisfactory. In the field of spent fuel management, the commissioning of the large reprocessing plant UP3 at La Hague in August 1990 has shown that we now fully master on the industrial and commercial scale the back-end of the fuel cycle, from transport and storage of spent fuels to reprocessing, wastes conditioning and fissile materials recycling.