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Belgium: Approval of Mox, moratorium on reprocessing

Nuclear Monitor Issue: 
#406
11/02/1994
Article

(February 11, 1994) It was already announced in WISE NC 404 (404.3997): a Belgian Parliamentary Commission recommended that the Parliament should instruct the government to enact a 5-year moratorium on a new reprocessing contract. Meanwhile, the Parliament did so. And more.

(406.4025) WISE Amsterdam - After more than a year of debate Belgium Parliament passed a resolution approval the use of MOX (Mixed-Oxide) fuel in two of the nuclear reactors. The members of Parliament (the resolution was passed by a vote of 105-57 with 9 abstentions) also instructed the Government to stop considering reprocessing as the 'reference' back-end policy for Belgium and to give priority to research and development on direct spent fuel disposal. The resolution directed the Government to seek substitute customers for near-term reprocessing and to suspend, for five years, any further action on Synatom's (the fuel cycle consortium) post-2000 reprocessing contract. This follow-on reprocessing contract with Cogéma, known as the Tihange-1 contract and signed in 1991, covers fuel discharged by that reactor that is not covered under the 1978 reprocessing agreement. Tihange-1 is jointly owned by Electrabel and Electricité de France. Another interesting sentence in the resolution is the one in which the Parliament called on the Government to "exercise fully" its authority over Synatom and veto any decision "contrary to the general inte-rest" after it's potential privatisation. But because "general interest' is not specified it's only potential interesting.

The decision to allow the use of MOX-fuel concerns the reactors Dod-3 and Tihange-2. Electrabel (electricity utility and owner of the NPP's) and Synatom support the idea of leaving the fuel cycle back end options open as long as possible, while continuing the Synatom reprocessing contract with Cogéma (the so-called UP-3 baseboad contract, signed in 1978).

Greenpeace International was very pleased and hailed the Belgian re-solution as a "major policy change" and "a decisive step away from the plutonium industry". Grecnpeace predicted that Cogéma would eventually suffer more than 2.13 billion French Francs (almost US$ 370 million) in lost revenues when Synatom cancels its post-2000 reprocessing contract.

At least some German utilities that signed post-2000 reprocessing con-tracts with Cogéma and BNFL also are known to be leaning toward canceling the pacts once German nuclear law is amended to permit direct spent fuel disposal as an accepted waste management option.

This is although the new contracts are 'cheap' compared with the old UP-3 base-load contracts: 5,000 French Francs (US$ 860) per kilogram heavy metal.

Sources: Nuclear Fuel, 20 December 1993 & 3 January 1994
Contact: Greenpeace Belgium, Vooruitgangsstraat 317, B-1219 Brussels, Belgium. Tel: +32 2 215 19 44; Fax: +32 2 215 19 50, email: eboi.gborieux@green2.maxcom.com.