The government has recognized the general interest of this disputed project, which aims to bury underground the most dangerous radioactive waste.
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The file was already on the table of his predecessor but it was ultimately Elisabeth Borne who acted the general interest of the Cigeo nuclear waste landfill center. The decree declaring the public utility project , signed by the government head of the government as well as by the Minister of Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, and the new Minister of Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, was published in the Official Journal, Friday, July 8. The opposition to this project, mobilized for several decades, denounced a “forceful passage” to “contempt for questions and proposals” emanating from civil society.
cigéo aims to bury, under 500 meters of clay rocks, so -called “long and high activity nuclear waste”, the most dangerous, on a land located on horseback on the departments of the Meuse and the Haute-Marne. In order to prepare this project, an underground laboratory was put into service on this site in 2000 by the National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management (Andra).
Expected for several months, this declaration of public utility (DUP) constitutes, according to Andra, an “important step”. “It is a choice to move forward, taken in responsibility, to give assurance to future generations that they will not be left without option to manage waste in an ever more uncertain world, explains Pierre-Marie Abadie, the director General of Andra. This is all this and nothing but that: the DUP is not an authorization for work and does not pre -empt the decisions to come. “
This decree, in fact, does not constitute a green light at the start of the site of the landfill center proper, which will be built alongside the current laboratory. The Andra plans to file by at the end of the year a request for creation authorization, which will trigger an investigation of several years by the nuclear security authority. At the end of it, construction work could really start. 2> associations want to sueing
The declaration of public utility, however, will have concrete consequences. It will make it possible to comply the urban planning documents with the needs of the project and to launch preparatory work, such as the renovation of a railway, the installation of an electric transformer, the movement of a roundabout or strengthening the drinking water supply. “The DUP does not exercise this work of administrative procedures”, specifies Pierre-Marie Abadie.
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