The ASN supervises the overall technical, safety-related and regulatory consistency of the industrial choices made with regard to fuel management. The question of the long-term management of spent fuels, mining residues and depleted uranium is a very real one and it is important to take account of all contingencies and uncertainties.

EDF has to undertake a forward-looking study in cooperation with the fuel cycle companies, presenting elements concerning compatibility between current changes in fuel characteristics or spent fuel management systems and fuel cycle installation developments.

The data presented by EDF and reviewed to date, provide significant clarification of how the fuel cycle operates and the safety issues, in particular adding the technical and regulatory limits that changes to fuel management policies could bring about, subject to adequate justification.

In order to maintain an overview of the fuel cycle, these data will have to be periodically updated. For any new fuel management system, EDF will be required to present a feasibility study, accompanied by a revision of the "nuclear fuel cycle" dossier, specifying and justifying any differences.

Through this forward-looking approach, the ASN aims to avoid saturation of the nuclear power plant interim storage capacity that has happened in other countries, and prevent the licensees from using older installations as an palliative interim solution, owing to their less stringent regulatory and technical authorisations.

As time passes, so the fuel cycle installations change. The ASN ensures that the technical solutions adopted by industry have and continue to have no safety and radiation protection consequences for the workers, the population and the environment. However, and aside from technical considerations, the regulatory framework of the installations may turn out to be no longer appropriate to the activities actually carried out in them.

For a number of years now, the ASN has therefore been implementing various procedures to offer a better legal framework for the workings of the main installations: revision of the authorisation decrees and discharge licences for the COGEMA La Hague site and revision of the discharge licences for the Tricastin site.

This should continue in the coming years, in particularly through drafting of an authorisation decree for the CERCA installation on the Romans site, which had previously simply been covered by the notification system (see point 2.3.1).

The revision of the La Hague site nuclear installations authorisation decrees, which was completed on 10 January 2003, is a technical decision designed to allow changes to the activities in the installations in satisfactory conditions of safety and environmental protection, and in conformity with the regulations. The reference fuel elements for which reprocessing was envisaged at the time of publication of the old decrees were relatively unrepresentative of the fuel elements actually loaded into the reactors. This difference will be accentuated in the future. This revision was therefore needed to manage current fuel throughput. The authorised modifications will combine improved nuclear safety with greater environmental protection through the use of the best techniques available.

Furthermore, the greater diversity in the nature and origin of the materials and substances to be processed, exploiting the potential of each of the UP2 800, UP3 and STE3 facilities for recycling, processing, packaging or storing radioactive substances (effluent, waste, scrap, etc.) and of the nuclear materials (uranium, plutonium, new fuels) from other facilities, could prove to be of benefit during dismantling or when retrieving legacy waste from.

The decrees published on 11 January 2003 in the Official Gazette define a new operating framework for the facilities and article 5 requires that any extension of the current operating framework within this new framework, receive specific authorisation issued by interministerial order. The actual operations to process the fuels, substances and materials authorised by interministerial orders must, as presently, be the subject of an operational agreement for each particular processing campaign outside the previously authorised domain. This enables account to be taken of the time elapsed between the authorisation to extend the domain and the actual processing operation performance and checks to be made on the compatibility of the performance conditions envisaged by the licensee with installation safety and protection of persons and the environment. The interministerial orders specify that the operational agreement will be issued by the Director General for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection.

In 2003, environmental defence associations took legal action to obtain cancellation of the decrees authorising the requested modifications and the water intake and effluent discharge licences for the La Hague installations. So far, only one of the cases has been judged and the Conseil d'Etat (supreme administrative court) rejected the request for revocation of the 10 January 2003 decree authorising COGEMA to modify STE3.

In 2001, environmental defence associations also took action to obtain recognition of the illegality of operations to import, dispose of and reprocess spent nuclear fuel from the Australian ANSTO nuclear research reactor. Claiming that reprocessing took too long, the plaintiffs asked that the assemblies be returned to the country of origin, on the grounds that they should be regarded as waste. In a decision of 12 April 2005, the Caen court of appeal partially overturned a judgement of the Cherbourg court dated 3 February 2003 and considered that the nuclear fuel in question did constitute radioactive waste under the terms of the Environment Code, and ordered COGEMA La Hague to produce and to communicate to the plaintiff organisations the operational authorisation for reprocessing the stock of fuel, failing which COGEMA should terminate the presence of all of these materials on French soil. Reprocessing of the assemblies concerned began on 9 June 2005. The above-mentioned order by the Caen court of appeal was confirmed by the Cour de Cassation (supreme court of appeal) on 7 December 2005.