TECHNICAL VISITS
Technical visits of the Meuse & Haute-Marne Centre of Andra
The Meuse & Haute-Marne Centre of Andra (CMHM) is dedicated to Cigéo, Industrial Centre for Geological Disposal that is the deep geological disposal facility for radioactive waste to be built in France. Cigéo will serve for disposal of highly radioactive long-lived waste produced by France's current fleet of nuclear power plants, until they are dismantled. This waste results from the reprocessing of spent fuel from these plants.
Currently, until the disposal facility is built, the Meuse & Haute-Marne centre includes the Bure Underground Research Laboratory (URL), the Environmental Specimen Bank (Ecothèque) and the Technological Exhibition Facility (ETe).
If the location map does not appear automatically, please click on the following link: CMHM - Google map
The Bure Underground Research Laboratory (URL)
The Bure Underground Research Laboratory enables scientific and technological research for the Cigéo project to be carried out directly within the Callovo-Oxfordian host clay layer. Located at - 490 m depth, it now represents a 1,800-metre network of drifts, monitored by more than 11 000 sensors, where over 50 experiments and studies are conducted in real conditions. More than 1000 samples have been drilled for characterisation purposes.
The Environmental Specimen Bank (Ecothèque)
The Environmental Specimen Bank is part of the Perennial Observatory of the Environment that aims to establish the initial state of the environment around the Cigéo project, then to monitor any changes to the environment throughout the construction and operating life of Cigéo, in addition to regulatory environmental monitoring. The Ecothèque is designed for the long-term conservation of environmental samples and will thus preserve the memory of the environment throughout the centennial operations of Cigéo.
The Technological Exhibition Facility (ETe)
The 4,000 m² Technological Exhibition Facility is an experimentation and public information centre built to present the Cigeo project through exhibitions, scale models and industrial prototypes of technological solutions that may be used in the future Cigéo (disposal canisters, robot for emplacement and retrieviability of disposal waste canister…).
Registration to the technical visit
Visits of the Meuse/Haute-Marne Underground Research Laboratory will be available on Wednesday June 15th and Thursday June 16th in the afternoon.
Limited seats for these visits (first arrived-first served basis).
Registration fee = €70 (tax included)