nuclear-news

“By the closing of our first-half results, we will draw the accounting consequences of our intention to extend the lifespan of our existing nuclear plants beyond 40 years,” EDF CEO Jean-Bernard Levy said in Saturday’s Le Figaro newspaper.

EDF had said before it intended to extend the lifespan of its French nuclear plants to 50 or 60 years, beyond the 40 years they were initially built for. Energy Minister Segolene Royal said in February that the government was willing to give the go-ahead for such a move.

But French nuclear watchdog ASN is the only authority allowed to grant such an extension, and it has said a decision on the matter would not come before 2018-2019. To make the accounting change, which would automatically boost EDF’s profits, the company must convince its auditors that there is a good chance of the extension being granted.

In 2003, EDF extended the depreciation schedule for nuclear reactors in its accounts to 40 years from 30 years – six years before the ASN agreed to the move.

The utility, 85 percent-owned by the French government, said on Friday it would seek to raise 4 billion euros ($4.5 billion), amid concerns that a 23 billion euro nuclear plant project at Hinkley Point in Britain would put a strain on its finances.

(Reporting by Michel Rose; Editing by Toby Chopra and Hugh Lawson)

During a press conference with his French counterpart Manuel Valls, Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel said a problem at the Cattenom plant could “wipe the duchy off the map”.

“The Cattenom site scares us, there’s no point in hiding it,” he said of the plant that has been in operation since the mid-1980s. “Our greatest wish is that Cattenom close.”

Luxembourg “would be prepared to make a financial commitment to a project, which would have to be cross-border… at Cattenom that is not nuclear in nature.”

Valls — who was on a one-day visit to the nation of about 500,000 — said France has pledged to cut its reliance on nuclear energy from more than 75 percent to 50 percent by shutting 24 reactors by 2025.
“Message received,” he added.

Fessenheim houses two 900-megawatt reactors and has been running since 1977. Due to its age activists have long called for it to be permanently closed.

French President Francois Hollande has pledged to shut down the Fessenheim plant by the end of his five-year term in 2017.

That’s the conclusion of a new report by France’s ANCCLI commission that reports on the state of the country’s nuclear facilities.

“France is not ready to face a serious nuclear accident,” warned the commission’s president Jean-Claude Delalonde. “Even though a national response plan was made public in February 2014, nothing has been put in place,” he said.

The report comes after both Switzerland and Germany have expressed concerns about the safety of some of France’s 19 nuclear power stations, with authorities in Geneva even launching legal action.

According to Delalonde’s association the French government has not learned the lessons from previous disasters like Chernobyl that was presented as a “Soviet” accident.

The Fukushima disaster in Japan prompted the French to improve certain safety measures around nuclear reactors but ANCCLI want more.

They want the “emergency zone” around nuclear power stations, where measures are put in place in the event of accident, extended from the current 10km radius to 80 km.

The fact this hasn’t been done already creates a dangerous situation for Europe, the report says.

For example France distributes iodine tablets, which protect against the potentially cancer-causing effects of radioactivity, to those living within the 10km radius of a nuclear reactor, but in Belgium the same measure is taken within a 20km radius.

After Fukushima, the radius was extended to between 20km and 50km in Switzerland. The entire state of Luxembourg is part of an emergency zone even though there are no nuclear power stations on its territory. It’s due to the fact the Cattenom reactor in France is close to the border.

The duchy has previously forwarded to the European Commission a study commissioned by Germany’s Greens party, which according to Luxembourg “listed the Cattenom plant’s security problems”.

ANCCLI wants French authorities to work out a plan and carryout “digital simulations” for how Iodine tablets would be distributed to the whole of France before a radioactive cloud passes and also how the population would be evacuated in the event of a disaster.

The extent of the problems France would face in the event of a disaster are made clear by the fact more than 1.25 million people live within 30km of the Bugey power plant near Switzerland and over one million live around the Fessenheim power station – the oldest in the country.

Delalonde points out that India’s contingency plans are far more developed than they are in France.

“They anticipate the amount of food that will be needed, the number of emergency beds needed, blankets and even how many saris would be needed,” he said.”This power plant is very old, too old to still be in operation,” said a spokesman for Germany’s Environment and Nuclear Safety Minister Barbara Hendricks.

Meanwhile, the Swiss canton of Geneva on Wednesday filed a complaint against French nuclear plant Bugey located in the neighbouring French region of Ain, claiming that it “deliberately puts in danger the life of others and pollutes the waters”.