The detailed story of Nuclear Power generation in France gives the lie to the U.S. pro-nuclear claims of a nuclear nirvana in France. The article is broad ranging and detailed, but lacks good identification of sources.
Areva’s subsidiary at Tricastin, the huge nuclear complex where the spill occurred — contaminating two rivers, kept quiet about the accident and then denied the spill endangered human health. Nevertheless, drinking and bathing in the water was temporarily banned, and Tricastin wine growers have struggled to market their products since the accident.
Three more accidents in the region followed, prompting the French environment minister to order radioactive readings at all 58 operating French reactors.
Most of the uranium isn’t “recycled” either. Ninety-five percent of the mass of spent French reactor fuel consists of uranium that is so contaminated with other fission products that it cannot be reused as reactor fuel at all (although France ships some of it to Russia). The vast majority of the uranium from reprocessing — nonfissile uranium 238 — cannot be recycled either and will need to be permanently secured.
France has so much radioactive waste that the government recently approached 3,511 communities suggesting they become home to the so-called low-level radioactive wastes that have nowhere to go.
up to 60 percent of the French public consistently calls for a phase-out of nuclear energy.
After four decades of uranium mining by Areva subsidiaries in the poorer northern region of the country — at Arlit and Akokan in the Sahara Desert — the country faces an environmental catastrophe that is destroying the lives and livelihoods of the surrounding communities.
Faced with large swathes of the country virtually cordoned off for new mines, some in Niger are fighting back, predominantly the Tuareg, the poorest and most deprived of Niger’s northern population.
The Niger government has responded by attempting to eliminate the Tuareg.
The two Areva EPR reactors under way — in Finland and France — have already run into trouble. The Finnish reactor at the Olkiluoto nuclear site started first, in August 2005, but has already fallen three years behind schedule after safety and quality-assurance problems with the piping, containment liner and concrete base slab were discovered.
Nuclear power is an environmental disaster.