France’s Asteralis, a subsidiary of Veolia Nuclear Solutions, has been awarded three new contracts for the treatment of radioactive waste at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission’s (CEA’s) Paris-Saclay centre. Since April, almost 50 Veolia Nuclear Solutions engineers, technicians and operators have been working at the CEA’s Paris-Saclay research centre, the biggest of the its nine research facilities.
Work includes a five-year contract for operation and maintenance of INB 72 (base nuclear facility), which manages and treats low, medium and high-activity solid radioactive waste. This also includes management of historic waste storage and its removal in preparation for the facility’s definitive closure.
A second contract relates to INB 35 where Veolia was already in charge of the operation and maintenance of the STELLA facility for the treatment of liquid radioactive waste. Veolia has now also been entrusted with the maintenance and monitoring through to 2020.
Finally, a third four-year contract means Nuclear Solutions is authorised to carry out daily clean-up operations and small repairs in a nuclear environment for all the site’s facilities. These contracts, signed at the end of 2017 and early 2018, came into force in mid- April.