France gets nearly 80% of its electricity from its 58 reactors. However, such a heavy reliance on nuclear power brings with it many major, unsolved problems, most especially that of radioactive waste. Despite assertions to the contrary, the French nuclear story is far from a gleaming example of nuclear success.
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Tuesday
Mar052013
March 9th human chain in Paris to remember Fukushima
Everyone to Paris, Saturday, March 9th! For those who can - and for the rest of us who'd like to - the French anti-nuclear network will be assembling in Paris in a human chain to remember Fukushima and call for an end to nuclear power.Démesurément dangereux et coûteux, le nucléaire soumet les humains et tous les êtres vivants à des pollutions et à une menace inacceptables. Hiroshima, Tchernobyl, Fukushima : aucune autre technologie n’a créé en si peu de temps des catastrophes si « durables ». Avec 58 réacteurs, le parc nucléaire français représente un risque majeur, pour nous et nos voisins européens. Attendrons-nous que la centrale de Nogent-sur-Seine, à 95 km de Paris, devienne le Fukushima français ?
Immeasurably dangerous and expensive, nuclear energy submits humans and all other living things to contamination and an unacceptable threat. Hiroshima, Chernobyl, Fukushima: no other technology can, in such short time, create such "long-lasting" catastrophes. With 58 reactors, the French nuclear complex represents a major risk, for us and for our European neigbors. Are we going to wait for the Nogent-sur-Seine reactor, 95 kilometers from Paris, to become the French Fukushima?
March 5, 2013 |
Tuesday
Mar052013
Areva loses a bundle in 2012
France's state-controlled nuclear engineering giant Areva lost $130 million in 2012 and its business is struggling to move past the Japan's nuclear disaster and a troubled mining venture. The company lost (EURO)2.5 billion in 2011, a year that saw many countries rethink their use of the nuclear energy after the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the Fukushima power plant. Much of those losses were due to a troubled uranium mining venture that was the subject of investigation.
March 5, 2013 |
Wednesday
Dec052012
EPR: Four years behind, at least, and now even MORE over-budget
Source: CRILAN, an activist group in Normandy working to stop the EPR reactor at Flamanville and elsewhere and the construction of high-tension transmission line corridors. (CRILAN also serves as the global expert and watchdog on the La Hague reprocessing facility).✔ 1.8 billion euros in 1998 when EdF envisaged building an EPR at Carnet, near Nantes, according to M. Ayrault.
✔ 3 billion euros in 2003, announced at a presentation in Rennes by the Minister of Industry.
✔ 3.3 billion euros during the “Public Debate” organized after the decision to build the reactor on EDF land at Flamanville, from where the very long high-tension lines to reach the Loire Country, are also costly.
✔ 6 billion euros in 2011 when, citing inside sources, CRILAN affirmed the the cost would be at least 8 billion euros.
✔ Today, 8.5 billion euros! And the enormous cost over-run is not, as the company claims, only due to the make-good payments because of faulty subcontracting and post-Fukushima measures.
How much in 2016 ? How much will we need to pay per kWh for electricity produced by this type of reactor? Three times more than anticipated?
We still do not know, despite our repeated demands to the Local Commission on Information,what type of fuel will be used in the EPR! MOX, or more enriched uranium with cladding “doped” with chromium, or traditional uranium like at OLKILUITO ?
Click here to read more:
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/france/
