EDF abandons its nuclear swimming pool project in the Hague, another industrialist will take over!

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The rumors were rife concerning the spent nuclear fuel storage pool project. They even went in all directions with location change announcements and evenpure and simple cancellation.

THE delays in planning of the project were not there to reassure either, with in particular the successive postponements of the submission of the DAC (creation authorization request) file for the basic nuclear installation.

Finally, the future of this swimming pool has just become clearer. According to our information, EDF and Orano have announced, “the abandonment of the centralized spent fuel storage pool project carried out by EDF”.

Construction by 2040

This project, whose cost estimated at 1.5 billion euroswas finally replaced by another, still in La Hague but under project management of Orano.

The new spent fuel storage capacities will thus be backed by the construction of new workshops and factories in Orano and should be ready in 2040.

This substitution of the EDF project by a project that would be attached to Orano’s industrial facilities is explained “by the industrial production factories in La Hague, improvingand by the political orientations exhibited in Nuclear Policy Council (CPN) on February 26, 2024 (namely a sustainable maintenance of nuclear power production in France and a confirmation of the recycling treatment policy, aiming for a fully closed cycle by the end of the century).”

Under the project management of a single actor

According to the two manufacturers, these data remove the short-term risk of “saturation of spent fuel storage capacities” and have led EDF and Orano “to initiate the need for forward-looking thinking about industrial strategy on the La Hague site for a coherent and optimized project under the project management of a single actor”.

This reflection therefore led the two operators to propose to the DGEC (Directorate General for Energy and Climate) and the ASN (Nuclear Safety Authority) “an evolution of the industrial portage of the project of new storage capacities of EDF towards Orano”.

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