en.Wedoany.com Reported - Jean-Christophe Varin, deputy director of the La Hague nuclear fuel reprocessing plant operated by the Orano Group in northwestern France, stated in an interview with Japanese media on May 12 that the plant will reprocess 1,220 tons of spent nuclear fuel in 2025, setting a record for the highest processing volume since 1999. The plant, one of the largest facilities of its kind in the world, is located approximately 15 kilometers north of the Flamanville Nuclear Power Plant.
According to statistics from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), nuclear power plants worldwide generate approximately 10,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel annually. The La Hague plant's processing volume in 2025 will account for slightly more than 10% of the global total. Reprocessing is the process of separating plutonium and uranium from spent nuclear fuel. The extracted plutonium is subsequently transported to southern France for processing into "mixed oxide" (MOX) fuel. Since 1976, the plant has cumulatively reprocessed over 42,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, serving clients including domestic French nuclear power plants as well as international customers from Japan, Germany, Switzerland, and other countries.
Varin stated that the French government has approved the continuation of nuclear fuel recycling activities beyond 2040, ensuring business continuity. Currently, the utilization rate of the plant's spent fuel storage pool capacity is expected to reach approximately 90% by the end of 2025, with a total storage volume of about 13,000 tons at that time. The company plans to increase storage density by using smaller storage canisters, boosting storage capacity by 15% by 2029, with the potential for further expansion to 30% if necessary.
France possesses some of the world's most advanced technologies in the nuclear fuel cycle field, and Japan is also actively building a similar system. The reprocessing plant of Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd., located in Rokkasho Village, Aomori Prefecture, is positioned as a core facility for the nuclear fuel cycle, with completion planned for fiscal year 2026 and a maximum annual processing capacity of 800 tons. Between November 2021 and March 2025, the plant dispatched a total of 89 operators to the La Hague plant for training. However, due to a series of technical issues, the completion date has been postponed 27 times, and formal commissioning remains an urgent task to be addressed.
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