> https://www.orano.group/en/nuclear-expertise/from-exploratio...
It's not that they are doing the recycling in a cookie factory.
The reality is that the French try hard to put high-level waste deep in under the ground. After more than 50 years of atomic plants and nearly 80 of lab reactors the French haven't a single adequate repository.
The most advanced project may open in 2025. An English concise description is already amusing, please read it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meuse/Haute_Marne_Underground_...
A more complete version, in French: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cig%C3%A9o
The Marcoule site where MOX fuel is manufactured had an explosion in 2011, which did result in a fatality.
You are right that we have a lot of plutonium that we can not use. The intent of superphenix was to use this plutonium. It failed.
Pity that it got closed, I hope technical issues are fixed and a new device based on better understanding replaces it.
That would be a long pipeline, because La Hague is facing the channel, not the north sea.
Are you kidding? What kind of nuclear waste has even the remote possibility to go critical that is produced by a VVER reactor that is pretty common?
Other forms of recycling are very viable and have much less problems and much less side streams.
The problem is of course that anti-nuclear crowed have stopped practically all technology development so they can claim all problems are solvable and nuclear should be abolished.
As everything with nuclear, we as a society barley got to first generation technology and then halted all development.
Canada is doing some create work with recycling of CANDU fuel, Moltex Energy is in development of a reactor to use that fuel and its a much better process then what the french use.