nuclear-news

AREVA neglecting France’s old radioactive uranium mining sites

Today, the site is the responsibility of Areva, a majority state-owned French multinational that builds nuclear power stations and manages uranium mines around the world……

France’s respected Independent Research and Information Commission on Radioactivity (CRIIRAD).  is similarly critical of the situation. “These exposures are totally unjustified and levels should be reduced by properly redeveloping the site and removing radioactive material,”

Radiation fears surround France’s old uranium mines, Google News, By Simon Coss (AFP)  27 May 11, ROSGLAS, France — It looks like any other another leafy woodland path in Brittany, but campaigners say ramblers on this particular trail may face levels of radiation at least 10 times higher than normal.

The path runs alongside a disused uranium mine in the hamlet of Rosglas, one of over 200 suspect sites dotted across France, this one marked with just a makeshift sign drawn up by local anti-nuclear campaigners.

When the leaders on the world’s most powerful developed economies meet this week at the G8 summit to discuss the aftermath of Japan’s Fukushima reactor disaster, France will urge them to keep faith with nuclear power……

But abandoned works like the one in Rosglas are testimony to an earlier era when France’s race to join the atomic age employed more lax standards.

“These sites were pretty much abandoned, vegetation has grown up over them, but the radiation is still there,” Chantal Cuisnier of local anti-nuclear group Sortir du Nucléaire Cornouaille told AFP.

Cuisnier’s group recently recorded levels of radiation up to 20 times above normal around the mine, which closed in the mid 1970s.

The group’s findings were validated in a report by France’s respected Independent Research and Information Commission on Radioactivity (CRIIRAD).

Today, the site is the responsibility of Areva, a majority state-owned French multinational that builds nuclear power stations and manages uranium mines around the world……

The CRIIRAD is similarly critical of the situation.

“These exposures are totally unjustified and levels should be reduced by properly redeveloping the site and removing radioactive material,” the organisation warned in a 2008 report.

Ange Le Lan the mayor of the nearby village of Meslan, in whose jurisdiction the abandoned mine falls shares some of the concern.

“It’s unfortunate that Areva has taken such a long time to look into the situation and that their actions came about as a result of activity by local environmental groups,” he told AFP.

Parents at the village school clearly seem uneasy about having a disused uranium mine in their back yard…..

AFP: Radiation fears surround France’s old uranium mines

May 27, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, France, Uranium