‘The dustbin’! Making a mental note of this derogatory name for the reprocessing plant, let us try to trace the history of it. We shall discover, as we do so, the role and power of words in this place where people tend to use as few of them as possible.

A name usurped

In the beginning there was the CEA and a so-called ‘atomic plant’. That, at least, is how the site is referred to on old maps of the region. To the workers and to the people of la Hague it was ‘the Jobourg plant’ (l'usine de Jobourg), from the name of one of the municipalities on whose territory the first workshops were erected.

Along came COGEMA, and from then on the establishment was known as the ‘la Hague reprocessing plant’ (usine de retraitement de la Hague). It is under this title, both technical and geographical, that it appears in the company's organisation chart and is marked on current maps of the region. In official publications, whether scientific or journalistic, the name is shortened to the ‘la Hague plant’ (l'usine de la Hague), and it is under this simplified version of the name that the establishment has achieved its present notoriety. Most French people now believe that ‘la Hague’ denotes a nuclear plant, unaware that it is actually the name of a region. If you say to someone: ‘I'm off to la Hague’ (Je pars à la Hague), they immediately assume that you are going to visit the plant.