FRANCE: Chernobyl Provokes Some Rethinking

Julio Godoy

PARIS, Apr 21 2006 (IPS) – The 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster has renewed debate over the high French dependence on nuclear power, and the danger it could pose to public health.
The debate has been spotlighted in a new book, Atomic Park a la recherche de victimes du nucléaire (Atomic Park searching for the victims of nuclear power) in which author Jean-Philippe Desbordes paints a frightening scenario of the consequences of the nuclear programme for public health.

Over the last 40 years, more than one million people have worked for different French nuclear programmes, both in the civil and the military branches, Desbordes told IPS. Based on official figures by the French social security administrations, in this period at least 25,000 people have died or are suffering from deadly diseases caused by exposure to radioactivity such as leukaemia and several other types of cancer.

This is a low estimate, Desbordes said in an interview. The real number of victims must be much higher, but is hidden by the secret character of all things nuclear in France.

The estimate does not for instance include the effect of nuclear generation on the population in areas where French nuclear facilities are concentrated, such as the Rhone and Loire river valleys and the Cotentin peninsula on the northwestern Atlantic coast.

France has the highest concentration of nuclear installations. Fifty-eight are currently functioning, providing 78.5 percent of all electricity generated in the country. In addition, France has hundreds of civilian and military nuclear research centres.
France also has about 900 sites for disposal of nuclear waste. More than a million cubic metres of radioactive waste is stored at these sites. This quantity is expected to double by 2020.

Several studies have warned of dangers from this heavy nuclear reliance. In a joint paper released January, the Institute for Nuclear Security and Protection, and the Institute of Health Surveillance say the number of thyroid cancer cases has risen threefold between 1975 and 1995. France began its nuclear reactors programme in 1975.

But despite growing evidence of the impact of nuclear power on public health, French authorities are pushing ahead with nuclear programmes, Desbordes said. Nuclear power is the first French industry, and its economic influence over the country is so large that France will never renounce it.

Several anti-nuclear groups are calling for more investment in renewable energies such as solar and wind power.

For many years French authorities have lied to us about the benign miracle of nuclear energy and hidden the dark side of it, Stéphane Lhomme, leader of the French anti-nuclear network Sortir du nucleaire (Get rid of nuclear power) told IPS.

Lhomme said nuclear power depends on uranium. But the world reserves of uranium are about to be exhausted, meaning that we are investing big money in renewing a dangerous technology, which will in any case become obsolete in a couple of decades.

France should build more wind and solar energy facilities, Lhomme said. In these areas, despite the abundance of these resources in our country, France is at the bottom of Europe, far below Germany, Denmark, Spain, and Italy.

According to the French state agency for the environment and the management of energy (ADEME after its French name), France has an installed capacity of 632 megawatts in wind turbines, representing barely 0.15 percent of the country s total energy production. Germany can produce more than 15,000 megawatts from wind turbines, and has ten times more solar panels than France.