Antinuclear

In the post-Fukushima period, however, that tacit silence is being broken with increasing frequency not just by anti-nuclear associations or candidates hoping to win elections but by French courts and the Nuclear Safety Authority.

Both these institutions are showing greater boldness in convicting nuclear operators guilty of negligence or issuing reprimands and demanding immediate corrective measures from giants like EDF or Areva, currently engaged in the design and construction of France’s first mega reactor (the EPR) capable of producing 1,650 MWe of electricity. India is slated to buy six of these massive reactors from Areva. To be located at Jaitapur, Maharashtra, they carry a price tag upwards of €40 billion.

On September 30, Socatri, a subsidiary of Areva, was found guilty of contaminating underground water tables in a 2008 leak of toxic liquid uranium at the Tricastin nuclear facility in southern France. The appeals court in the French city of Nimes, which handed down the sentence, fined the company €300,000 for pollution and gross negligence. It was also asked to pay damages to anti-nuclear associations and local residents. More seriously, the company was reprimanded for delays in communicating the leaks to the Nuclear Safety Authority.

The appellate court said Socatri/Areva was guilty of “introducing toxic substances into underground water, bringing about a significant modification of normal underground water flows.” Significantly, Socatri/Areva had been let off with a €40,000 fine in a trial held in October 2010. The Fukushima events have evidently led the country to take the risks involved in nuclear power more seriously.

“The trial in Nimes once again placed the spotlight on the degree of negligence which caused the accident in 2008. The judge rightly summed up the totality of acts of omission such as abandoning ageing facilities until they become decrepit to the point of rusting and, of course, the actions that followed the accident. They waited over 24 hours before signalling the leak,” said Etienne Ambroselli, spokesperson of the association Sortir du Nucleaire (Quit Nuclear).

“Thirty cubic metres of effluents containing uranium contaminated river waters, cutting off local drinking water supplies and preventing locals from bathing. According to a report prepared by CRIRAD [the Commission for Independent Research and Information on Radioactivity] the pollution was 27 times higher than the authorised limit for radioactive emissions,” the association said in a communiqué. For its part, the Anti-nuclear Collective is asking the population and the workers at Tricastin to call for shutting down the four reactors located at the facility……

Construction of the Flamanville EPR reactor which began in 2007 is experiencing significant delays with a large number of accidents including two fatalities. The EPR reactor, of which India plans to buy six, will now not be completed before 2016 at the earliest and its price tag has climbed to an estimated €7 billion per reactor of 1,650MWe capacity. Not a single EPR is as yet operational.

Of the four currently under construction, (one each in France and Finland, two in China) the Finnish reactor (construction began in August1985) is now slated to go on stream in 2013 but costs have risen from €3 billion to over €7 billion and the Finnish utility TVO is locked in costly arbitration (€2.7 billion) with Areva…..

With accusing fingers increasingly pointing towards the nuclear industry, a hesitant debate is beginning to open up in France. Socialist leader Segolene Royal who was defeated by Nicolas Sarkozy in France’s last presidential poll but hopes once again to be her party’s candidate, said she would close down the EPR under construction at Flamanville and completely abandon the EPR technology being pushed by Areva.

During the 2007 campaign, she had taken a firm stand against undertaking the construction of Flamanville, which she described as being dangerous besides the fact that it was, financially speaking, a bottomless well that would cost the exchequer very dear.