Graphitech, an EDF & Veolia joint entity

An EDF-Veolia subsidiary, Graphitech combines EDF's expertise in the nuclear industry and its dismantling engineering skills with Veolia's robotics skills in the nuclear environment, allowing the design of special machines and intervention platforms.

Graphitech objectives are:

develop remote-operation tools to break up complex, large-scale concrete and metal structures, and tools to extract activated graphite bricks and piles;

design systems and articulated arms to enable deployment of these tools.

Discover Graphitech with those who embody it:

Graphitech’s first objective will be to provide EDF with an optimized scenario for decommissioning the Chinon A2 reactor in 2028 and to offer a testing program to evaluate the technological solutions needed to complete the operation.

This program will begin in 2022 with a development and qualification phase using full-scale models to prepare the remote-operation tools to be used in decommissioning the Chinon reactor. The feedback from this pioneering operation will then be used with other reactors in France and around the world.

An international market

Graphitech aims to provide solutions for dismantling graphite reactors around the world, in France as well as the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Lithuania and Japan.

A societal and environmental challenge

Dismantling of reactors that use graphite technology raises a wide variety of issues. Whether in terms of societal responsibility, or environmental, social or human challenges, decommissioning and dismantling graphite reactors will be a major challenge for generations to come.

EDF’s decommissioning program for its UNGG reactors

Decommissioning of EDF’s six first-generation reactors is now underway at the buildings surrounding the reactors. EDF has also started preliminary work on the first graphite reactor to be dismantled, Chinon A2.