France to ship reprocessed nuclear waste to Japan

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

CAEN, France, Feb 3 (AFP) - France's nuclear waste reprocessing 
giant COGEMA announced Wednesday that it soon would ship 
back to Japan vitrified nuclear waste, the fourth such shipment in 
four years. The director of the COGEMA plan at La Hague said the 
date for  the shipment would be announced one or two days before 
it is to take place. COGEMA has contracts with 10 Japanese 
power companies to  reprocess their nuclear waste and ship it 
back to Japan in containers. Three such shipments have already 
taken place, the last between  January and March 1988. It involved 
three containers carrying blocks of waste embedded in glass and 
encased in stainless steel, each weighing about 500 kilograms 
(1100 pounds). The first operation involved 28 containers between 
February 23  and April 25 1995 and the second concerned 40 
containers between January 13 and March 18 1997. Germany and 
Japan are COGEMA's biggest clients. In 1998, it received 2,640 
tonnes of Japanese nuclear waste for reprocessing. 

Sandy Perle
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 
Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205

"The object of opening the mind, as of opening 
the mouth, is to close it again on something solid"
              - G. K. Chesterton -
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