Pumping began on Monday afternoon of a nitric acid leak at the Orano nuclear fuel reprocessing centre in The Hague (English Channel), which has been “shut down”, the group announced.
“Today, at around 4:00 a.m., a nitric acid leak of approximately 40 m3 was detected in a recycling acid storage workshop (STU workshop) at the Orano la Hague site. This liquid was automatically recovered in a storage tank. retention provided for this purpose,” the French group specialising in nuclear fuel announced in a statement posted on its website.
“This event is not radiological in nature and has no impact on the environment,” Orano added, adding that there was “no release” into the environment. However, a security perimeter was established and non-essential personnel for the management of the event were asked to leave the site, which was closed, according to a statement from the group.
Dissolve nuclear materials.
The intervention teams began pumping acid at 6.45pm, according to an Orano spokesman. The recycled acid that escaped from its storage site was “clean and not laden with uranium,” the spokesman said, and “all safety conditions are met to authorise the return of ‘all employees’ as of Tuesday.”
Nitric acid is used to dissolve nuclear materials. It is very potent and can cause skin burns and is corrosive to the respiratory tract. About 600 employees were on site early in the afternoon, compared with about 4,000 during normal operation, said the Orano spokesman.
The Nuclear Safety Authority, the French nuclear watchdog, informed of the incident, told AFP that this “environmental” incident was not “at this time” the subject of a declaration of significant events related to nuclear safety, which are classified from 0 to 0.7 on the Inés scale (International Nuclear Event Scale).
Every year, some 1,100 tonnes of spent fuel, mainly from French nuclear power plants but also from Europe and Japan, are sent to the La Hague processing and recycling plant on the Cotentin peninsula.
After a cooling process in a pool, the fuels are sheared before being immersed in a bath of nitric acid to dissolve the nuclear materials, Orano explains. The acid is then recovered from the reprocessed uranium and reused.
Source: BFM TV
