La Hague is a region on the tip of the Cotentin peninsula in Normandy, France. The Cotentin Peninsula juts out into the English Channel from Normandy towards England, forming part of the north-west coast of France. ... Mont Saint Michel is a historic pilgrimage site and a symbol of Normandy Normandy is a geographical region in northern France. ...
The dialect of the Norman language spoken by a minority in the region is called Haguais. The Norman poet Côtis-Capel was a native of the region and used the landscape as inspiration for his poetry. The painter Jean-François Millet was also a native of the region. The Norman language is a Romance language, one of the Oïl languages. ... Introduction The Sower. ...
The COGEMA La Hague site, the largest Light Water Reactor Nuclear Waste Reprocessing Plant (over half of the world capacity), is located in the region. The COGEMA La Hague site is a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant near La Hague on the French Cotentin Peninsula that currently has over half of the worlds light water reactor spent nuclear fuel reprocessing capacity. ...
The French reprocessing plant LaHague is, together with Sellafield, the main source of radioactive contamination to the Northeast Atlantic, the North Sea and the Barents Sea.
In 2000, discharges of alpha activity from LaHague were measured at 40 GBq.[187] This constitutes one third of the 1999 discharges from Sellafield, which measured 130 GBq.
LaHague too, plans to reprocess fuel with a higher burnup, which may increase the discharges from the plant in the coming years.
LaHague was originally built to treat the spent fuel from the French-designed Natural Uranium Gas-Graphite (NUGG) reactors.
In a submission to an inquiry into health and safety at LaHague, the CFDT argued that the plant had not yet been proved capable of treating oxide wastes on a commercial scale, and that no extension should be carried out until the process had been perfected.
The streams in the LaHague area are also contaminated: one, from which several herds of cattle drink, was found in 1976 to contain 3,800 picocuries per cubic metre of water.