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Nuclear power now losing its glow in France

France has quietly begun reassessing the risks of nuclear power…… “Climate change is changing the situation,” he said, “Extreme events that so far happened every thousand years along the coast now happen every hundred years.”…..

France Gives Its Nuclear Power Industry a 2nd Look  NYTimes.com By KATRIN BENNHOLD and DAVID JOLLY March 31, 2011 PARIS — The Fukushima nuclear crisis has prompted anti-nuclear marches across the world, persuaded the Chinese authorities to delay the construction of new reactors and helped the German government lose an important state election.

In France, a country that obtains nearly 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy, compared with 24 percent in Japan and 19 percent in the United States, there has been conspicuously little reaction.

So when the president of the French nuclear safety watchdog stated the obvious this week — “Nobody can guarantee that there will never be a nuclear accident in France” — it came as something of a shock to a country that has long prized its nuclear industry.

France has quietly begun reassessing the risks of nuclear power……

Over the last millennium, France has been the site of about 1,700 noticeable earthquakes, geologists estimate. Its nuclear reactors were built to withstand five times the impact of the worst earthquake ever registered here. But with severe flooding incidents and bad weather having intensified in recent years, Mr. Lacoste said, the past was not necessarily a good guide to the future.

“Climate change is changing the situation,” he said, “Extreme events that so far happened every thousand years along the coast now happen every hundred years.”…..

The industry’s history here is one reason that, when French officials talk of tougher safety measures, the world is likely to listen.

Other countries certainly took note when France became the first to advise its citizens to leave Tokyo and provided planes to repatriate those unable or unwilling to travel south,…..The recommendation was the result of nuclear experts at the Japanese subsidiary of Areva warning the French ambassador about a potential risk of contamination in Tokyo if the wind turned and rain then deposited radioactivity from the damaged reactors in the capital. ….
France Gives Its Nuclear Power Industry a 2nd Look – NYTimes.com

April 1, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | France, politics