Marcoule Nuclear Site

Marcoule Nuclear Site (French: Site nucléaire de Marcoule) is a nuclear facility in the Chusclan and Codoletcommunes, near Bagnols-sur-Cèze in the Garddepartment of France, which is in the tourist, wine and agricultural Côtes-du-Rhône region. The plant is around 25 km north west of Avignon, on the banks of the Rhone.

Operational since 1956, Marcoule is a gigantic site run by the atomic energy organization Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique (CEA) and Areva NC and is known as CEA VALRHO Marcoule. The first industrial and military plutonium experiments took place in Marcoule. Diversification of the site was started in the 1970s with the creation of the Phénix prototype fast breeder reactor, which was operational until 2009, and is nowadays an important site for decommissioning nuclear facilities activities.

As of 2016, the Phénix reactor was planned to be succeeded by the sodium-cooled fast reactorASTRID (Advanced Sodium Technical Reactor for Industrial Demonstration), foreseen to become operational in the 2030s. However, in 2019 the ASTRID project was closed.

Since 1995, the Melox ("Mélange d'Oxydes", Mixture of Oxides) factory has been producing MOX from a mix of uranium and plutonium oxides. MOX is used to recycle plutonium from nuclear fuel; this plutonium comes from the La Hague site.

The ATelier Alpha et Laboratoires pour ANalyses, Transuraniens et Etudes de retraitement (ATALANTE) is a CEA laboratory investigating the issues of nuclear reprocessing of nuclear fuel and of radioactive waste.