Megaproject underway: governance of nuclear waste management in France

Given France’s role as a nuclear energy “superpower”, with 58 nuclear reactors supplying 75% of the electricity consumed in the country, the current French plans for the creation of a deep geological disposal repository for intermediatelevel long-lived and high-level radioactive waste (ILW-LL and HLW) have been generating worldwide interest. The search for a site has been ongoing since the late 1970s, when the government declared deep geological disposal as the preferred option for radioactive waste management. However, like in many other countries where nuclear power is used, the site investigations conducted in the late 1980s generated intense local opposition, prompting the government to declare a one-year moratorium on the search of a site in 1990. After extensive consultation, the Parliament adopted a law on the management of radioactive waste in 1991; it was the country’s first law on nuclear power.