Law enforcement officers stationed in Cotentin, the nuclear convoy to Germany is being prepared

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There are several clues since this Monday November 18, 2024in the morning. Since dawn, the gendarmerie helicopter has been crisscrossing the sky over La Hague (Manche). On the route between La Hague and Valognes, gendarmes are stationed here and there for secure the premises. Several times in the morning, convoys of military vehicles go back and forth. Everything indicates it.

A convoy of nuclear waste prepares to leave France in a few days. And this is not just any convoy, but one that has been expected for several years. Direction Germany.

On The Hague for decades

Quite a symbol. This is the last nuclear convoy to our neighbor across the Rhine, the one which marks the end of the soap opera which lasted more than forty years.

As a reminder, in 2011, the transport of German nuclear waste was interrupted for technical and financial reasons. There have already been thousands since 1978. More than 3,000 containers of German waste reprocessed in The Hague and returned since 1977. That is 97% of the total. There then remains 3% of radioactivity in France out of the 5,310 tonnes processed on the La Hague site between 1978 and 2008.

French law prohibits the storage of foreign waste on our soil. It must therefore be returned. Environmental activists are pleading for this. However, we must wait until 2021 for an agreement to be found. For a total amount of more than one billion euros, signed by Orano with the German electricians PreussenElektra, RWE, ENBW and Vattenfall, it provides for the return of German radioactivity before the end of 2024.

We are there. German waste will leave Orano La Hague for Germany, and more precisely Philippsburg. Along the Rhine, the city located in the Land of Baden-Württemberg will receive these waste packages on the site of the former nuclear plant, and its two reactors, completely shut down in December 2019.

A question of volume

In the contract, and for technical reasons, the hundred packages of long-lived medium-level waste (MAVL) produced by Germany which must be returned there, are replaced by only four packages of high-level waste (HA). ). It is the equivalent in radioactivity.

The equivalent in volume must also legally be returned to the emitting country, 25 packaging having already been used to transport fuel (considered as low-level waste) must also be returned. Thus, “the number and composition ensure neutrality of the operation with regard to the protection of human health, safety and the environment”, specified the contract in 2021.

It is therefore these four high activity packages which are leaving La Hague at this very moment. According to our information, the train (HA) could leave tomorrow from the Valognes railway terminal. As for the 25 packaging already used to transport fuels, considered low-level waste, they have already left the spent fuel processing and recycling plant. They were transported and “loaded in Dunkirk on October 9, heading to the United States,” explains Greenpeace.

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