Safety assessment of ANDRA's application documents for the French repository project Cigéo
At the beginning of 2023, the French operator Agence nationale pour la gestion des déchets radioactifs (ANDRA) of the Cigéo repository project near the municipality of Bure in France submitted the application documents for the construction of a repository for long-lived waste from nuclear facilities and high-level radioactive waste from reprocessing to the French nuclear regulatory authority Autorité de sûreté nucléaire (ASN). Experience from comparable projects in other countries shows that the application documents for a repository in geological formations are extensive and thematically complex. It is envisaged that radioactive waste will be stored in Bure at a depth of 500 metres from 2025.
The Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV) is the lead ministry for nuclear waste management issues in Germany and abroad. The Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE), as a subordinate technical and supervisory authority, is responsible for the participation of authorities and the public both in the domestic site selection procedure and in the context of environmental impact assessments (EIA) for interim and final repositories and thus also for comparable procedures abroad.
The project is intended to provide the BMUV and BASE with a technically sound assessment of the application documents at an early stage in order to obtain technical indications for the concrete safety-related design of the French project. On the other hand, the technical assessment of the application documents should contain elements that can be used for a possible statement by BASE, as the competent German agency of the Federal Government, in the context of a cross-border participation procedure (cross-border EIA). Finally, the technical assessment should be designed in such a way that the public is informed about the French project in an understandable way. Furthermore, the neighbouring federal states are to be provided with a basis which they can use for their own statements if necessary.