One person has been killed and four injured, one seriously, by a blast at the Marcoule nuclear site in France.
There was no risk of a radioactive leak after the blast, caused by a fire near a furnace in the Centraco radioactive waste storage site, said officials.
The plant's owner, national electricity provider EDF, said it had been "an industrial accident, not a nuclear accident".
There are no nuclear reactors at the southern French site.
The explosion hit the area at 11:45 local time (09:45 GMT).
"For the time being nothing has made it outside," said a spokesman for France's Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).
The Centraco treatment centre belongs to a subsidiary of EDF. It produces MOX fuel, which recycles plutonium from nuclear weapons.
The EDF spokesman said the furnace affected had been burning contaminated waste, including fuels, tools and clothing which had been used in nuclear energy production.
"The fire caused by the explosion was under control," he said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it was in touch with the French authorities to learn more about the nature of the explosion.
Director General Yukiya Amano said the organisation's incident centre had been "immediately activated", Reuters reports.
Nuclear power meets 75% of France's energy needs.
Marcoule was opened in 1955 and is one of France's oldest nuclear sites, though it has been extensively modernised.
It is located in the Gard department in Languedoc-Roussillon region, near France's Mediterranean coast.
All the country's 58 nuclear reactors have been put through stress tests in recent months, following the disaster at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant which was hit by an earthquake and tsunami.
EDF's share prices fell by more than 6% as news of the blast emerged.
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Analysis
The French nuclear programme does not have a stellar record of transparency. In environmental circles, particular opprobrium is reserved for officials who in 1986 claimed the Chernobyl accident would have no impact on France - a statement lampooned as indicating officials believed radioactive fallout observed national boundaries.
What this incident implies for the future of the French nuclear programme is not entirely clear. If it remains a relatively minor matter, it will probably be passed off as the type of thing that regrettably happens in all types of industrial facility.
However, Marcoule is on the list of candidate sites to host one of the European Pressurised Water Reactors (EPRs) that according to government policy are to provide the next generation of French citizens with nuclear electricity.
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