Pierrelatte - Valrho
BP 171 30207 Bagnols sur Céze cedex 33 4 66 79 60 00
The site of Pierrelatte, property of the Commissariat à l' Énergie Atomique, was always devoted exclusively to enrichment of uranium for defense applications. In 1976 the CEA transferred the industrial activities at the site to Cogéma, whilte retaining the laboratories and pilot units located in the northern zone. In 1979, the CEA established the Centre d'études nucléaires de la Vallée du Rhône (Cen Valhro), composed of these installations and the research and development installations at Marcoule.
Production of HEU ceased at the Pierrelatte defence enrichment plant on 30 June 1996. This followed the announcement by the French President in February 1996 that France had sufficient stockpiles of fissile materials to meet its future defence needs. Pre-dismantling (rinsing, cleaning of the installations) was launched at once. It is now a question of approaching dismantling itself. Taking into account the volume of the site to the famous concrete cathedrals, it is a pilot operation. Radioactive decontamination will still take about five to six years. The total cost with to the ministry for Defense is estimated at 2 billion francs since July 1996.
In France, uranium concentrates are refined and converted by Comurhex, a COGEMA subsidiary, at its Malvési and Pierrelatte plants. Comurhex has an annual name-plate capacity of 14,000 metric tons of uranium and supplies one third of the UF6 worldwide production.
The gaseous diffusion process was first applied in 1958 to the production of highly enriched uranium for defense programs at COGEMA's Pierrelatte plant. The gas diffusion technique was developed on an industrial scale in France by Eurodif, the European multinational subsidiary of COGEMA, whose plant in Pierrelatte began delivering its first ton of enriched uranium in 1979. With a capacity of 10.8 million of SWUs per year, Eurodif has the second largest capacity for enrichment in the world for market economies (outside Russia's Minatom) after US Enrichment Corporation.
The large Tricastin enrichment facility includes four nuclear reactors that provide over 3000 MWe power for the plant.
Uranium and plutonium recovered by spent fuel reprocessing are recycled into new fuel elements at Pierrelatte. COGEMA has two facilities in operation (TU2 (17) and TU5 (18) ) to chemically treat recovered uranium for recycling into uranium fuel, after reenrichment in uranium 235. TU2 also produces depleted uranium oxide for mixed uranium / plutonium oxide fuel (MOX).
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