France Sets Cost Benchmark for Cigéo Nuclear Waste Repository

France has locked in a fresh cost benchmark for Cigéo, the deep geological repository planned at Bure in the Meuse and Haute-Marne, and the real significance is financial as much as technical: EDF said the new number does not materially change its expected provisioning level versus its 2025 accounts.

The ministerial decree, dated March 30, 2026 and published in the Journal Officiel on April 1, set the industrial reference cost used to calculate future provisions for the project. That matters because Cigéo is not just another waste site. It is the back-end bill for France’s nuclear system, and the operators responsible for paying it are EDF, CEA and Orano. Andra, France’s national radioactive waste management agency, leads the project and supplied the cost data behind the decree.

Andra’s latest costing, issued in 2025, put Cigéo at between €26.1 billion and €37.5 billion in 2012 prices for more than 150 years of operation, from January 2016 to planned closure in 2170. Once commissioned, now expected around 2050 if the schedule holds, the repository would run at average annual costs of €140 million to €220 million in 2012 prices. The construction and commissioning phase alone was estimated at €7.9 billion to €9.6 billion.

The new state benchmark also shows how far Cigéo has moved since France’s earlier reference point. In 2016, the government fixed an objective cost of €25 billion in 2011 conditions. Since then, Andra has folded in extra time for detailed preliminary design studies, the creation-authorization application, and the instruction process, along with France’s third multiannual energy program, published in February 2026. The latest update is meant to stand until the next formal reassessment, with the regulatory framework requiring cost reviews at key project stages and no later than the public inquiry phase expected by the end of 2026.

That timing is why the decree matters now. Andra currently expects a creation authorization decree in late 2027 or early 2028, with first waste packages around 2050. The ASNR issued an opinion on Sept. 23, 2025 on the technical foundations of the cost evaluation, adding another step in the long run-up to construction. For EDF and the French state, the message is straightforward: the waste bill is still being formalized, but it is already being absorbed into the economics of running reactors today and keeping the whole nuclear model credible for tomorrow.