Surprise! French nuclear safety is not perfect
The French fleet is perhaps the safest in the world, it is not immune to an accident and ASN recommendations are cold in the back.
ncredible! A diesel generator is missing from each reactor in French nuclear power plants! And it will cost some 2 billion euros to EDF to install them!
This is what André-Claude Lacoste, president of the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), notes in his interview with Le Monde dated January 4, 2012. In total, the application of the measures recommended by the ASN report handed over on January 3 to François Fillon would cost 10 billion euros, according to EDF quoted by AFP. A substantial bill, especially if we remember the post-Fukushima declarations of the French nuclear industry.
After the drama of March 11, 2011, Nicolas Sarkozy praised French nuclear power, considering it to be the safest in the world. He thus explained the loss of certain power plant markets abroad by the additional cost generated by this security vis-à-vis competitors.
The measures recommended by ASN
Today, a French fleet of 58 active nuclear reactors is in the hot seat. The ASN report points to several weaknesses when faced with the possibility of "extreme situations". A salutary realization at a time when climatologists do not stop repeating that global warming will, precisely, cause a multiplication of extreme metrological phenomena (storms, floods, droughts ...). Suddenly, we can read in this report:
"An accident can never be excluded."
The Fukushima disaster thus appears to have direct consequences on the new conception of French nuclear safety. After March 11, 2011, our power stations seemed to be immune to a similar tragedy: no earthquake of magnitude 9 expected nor a wave 15 meters high in sight. And, above all, installations capable, unlike those of the Japanese, of withstanding the worst ...
Of course, some unhappy minds have brought Fukushima and Le Blayais together ... On December 27, 1999, the three operating reactors of this power station built in 1981 were put into emergency shutdown following the rising waters of the Gironde estuary pushed by the winds of storm Martin and causing the power plant to flood.
An event classified as an incident (level 2 on the Ines scale) which has 7 (level of a major accident such as that of Fukushima). However, we learn from the ASN report that each reactor in French power plants will have to be fitted with "a generator and a last-resort water supply". This measure is part of the "hard core" recommended by ASN to reinforce the "robustness" of the power plants, which includes in particular:
* Premises and material resources for crisis management
* Means of communication and alert
* Technical and environmental instrumentation
* Operational dosimetry resources for workers
This list, in addition to making people shudder when we consider that we now have 58 reactors which do not all comply with these recommendations, is a precise reminder of what was lacking in Fukushima.
On March 11, 2011, it was the breakdown of the emergency generator sets, drowned in the tsunami wave, which caused the uncooled reactor cores to melt. It was also the unpreparedness of plant personnel for such a situation that considerably slowed down the first measures, such as the routing of a new power line. Evidence has testified to the lack of personal dosimeters for workers. The implementation of crisis management has also proved to be faulty with an obvious lack of qualified manpower on the site to deal with the disaster.
(...)
Suite and source: http://www.slate.fr/story/48343/nucleaire-surete-risque