No more nuclear, no more lies!

French Minister of the Environment Borlo today told preoccupied residents in the Vaucluse, a popular southern French tourist destination, that groundwater would be analysed to see whether it had been contaminated by the untreated liquid uranium that spilled from the Tricastin nuclear power station in Bollene ten days ago. There's no reason to panic, he told us all, beaming, on TV. Well, what would you feel like doing if you had been drinking radioactive water for decades, poisoned by your own government? Panic I would, hell yes! Indeed, Vaucluse residents hardly feel like smiling, nor do people feel reassured in other areas of France whose nuclear power plants date back to the 1970s and are feared to have been leaking into the water table for years now.

After the Tricastin leak, that last week was graded one on the one-to-seven scale of nuclear accidents, an embarrassed government banned drinking well-water and swimming or fishing in two of the region's rivers.

The leak occurred when a tank was being cleaned between Monday night and Tuesday morning but was not detected until yesterday. Around 30 cubic metres of liquid containing uranium, which was not enriched, leaked out of a tank. Of this, 18 cubic metres poured on to the ground and into the nearby Gaffiere and Lauzon rivers, which flow into the Rhone. The plant has been operational since 1975.

Officials from the Socatri safety agency, a subsidiary of nuclear giant Areva, said groundwater, wells and rivers had shown no effects yesterday. The nuclear safety authority said radioactive levels detected in rivers and lakes in the region were decreasing.
-The Guardian, 10 July 2008.

No effects on groundwater, says nuclear giant Areva. Are people, particularly leukaemia patients, supposed to believe that? As Greenpeace International nuclear campaigner, Aslihan Tumer, said: "Given the restrictions on the consumption and use of water in the area, it is clear that the leak poses a risk to the local population and to the environment."

The French environmental group, the Committee for Independent Research and Information on Radioactivity, said that the radioactivity released into the environment was at least 100 times higher than the fixed limit for that site for the entire year. This Committee has been ringing alarm bells with regard to certain derelict power stations in Fessenheim (Strasbourg) and the Cote d'Or, among others, for 20 years. Up until the Tricastin accident, its pleas went unheeded. Will the government finally bother to pull the Committee's reports out of that dusty drawer and take action?

With 87 % of France's electricity coming from the nuclear sector, the chances of this happening or of people being told the truth about the potential decade-long contamination of drinking water seem very meagre indeed.

More information for French speakers here and here

More information on similar recent leaks in Spain here and No es el arranque de los Simpson ...