Le forum Plutonium wrote:« maintaining French nuclear potential and producing plutonium is more a matter of the arms trade than of energy choice ».
Nuclear stubbornness.
The Politis dossier published on July 10 and entitled "The nuclear illusion" concludes with this sentence from Patrick Piro:
"Nuclear stubbornness is first of all a political question".
While we are working at the Sortir du Nucléaire network to write a brochure on plutonium and reprocessing, we wonder why the nuclear lobby stubbornly reprocessed the fuel. The official pretext is to reduce the volume of waste (which is false), but everyone knows that it is a question of extracting the 1% of plutonium contained, exclusively, in the fuel after use in nuclear reactors. Faced with the difficulties and economic failure of the plutonium sector, we have found, as justification, only the argument of military strategy. Plutonium, available only in spent fuel, is essential for maintaining the nuclear deterrent. The approximately 250 nuclear warheads installed on Mirages aircraft and nuclear submarines contain approximately six kilos of plutonium each, or a total of 1,5 tonnes. In the event of nuclear war, it is necessary to be able to renew this stock. EDF donates 850 tonnes of fuel per year to be reprocessed at La Hague to extract 8,5 tonnes of plutonium. This justifies maintaining at all costs the availability of the La Hague factories and, moreover, the operation and renewal of the 58 EDF reactors. This strategic choice of the French government justifies the installation of reprocessing in a place that is easy to protect like North Cotentin is also the concentration of the places of production of spent fuel containing plutonium in only 18 sites in France. This is how EDF contributes to the promotion of the nuclear strike force that President Sarkozy is currently offering to Europe. Patrick Piro is right, the "revival" of nuclear power mentioned by its promoters is only an illusion, but it justifies the continued operation of aging reactors and the construction of new EPRs. Will the French let themselves be lulled for a long time by these illusions?
Jean-Pierre Morichaud, Green in Drôme-Ardèche.
INCIDENTS AROUND THE TRICASTIN
Following a large uranium leak in Socatri premises, the media news in July 2008 revolved around nuclear. The Drôme General Council contributed to this by calling an extraordinary meeting of the Tricastin CLI on July 18. I therefore officially protested there against ASN's classification of the “incident” of Socatri at level 1 of the INES scale of severity. Since uranium pollution from several water tables around the nuclear site has been observed, and levels 0, 1 and 2 do not envisage consequences outside the site, this “serious incident” is level 3 which evokes “a very low rejection: exposure of the public representing a fraction of the prescribed limits”. During my participation in the CSSIN, we discussed at length the application of this INES scale to the transport of radioactive materials. On July 25, 2008, an AFP press release reviewed recent incidents classified as level 1 in nuclear power plants. June 25 in Cruas, July 4 in Fessenheim, July 13 in Nogent-sur-Marne, 120 km from Paris. To this must be added the contamination of 15 temporary workers at the St Alban power station on July 18 and an overshooting of the authorized carbon 14 release limits, still at Socatri. The revealed accumulation of these incidents shows the fragility of sophisticated and dilapidated French nuclear installations. These events in July in Tricastin raised awareness in the press and among residents of the nuclear risk. Radioactivity destroys living beings not only by radiation but also by contamination. The risk does not only affect men, but also their economic activities and their goods (market gardening, wine and real estate). Two deputies, Thierry Mariani for the Majority in the Drôme and Pascal Terrasse for the Opposition in Ardèche, filed a request for a parliamentary inquiry into the Tricastin incident.
AGING REACTORS
The 54 reactors built in France between 1977 and 1983 are now over 30 years old. They were built to last 25 years (1) and not 40, as EDF claims. The technologies and materials used are those of the 60s. To make them last 40 years, EDF changes all the elements that can be used, with the exception of the reactor vessel and the concrete enclosure that surrounds it. . This 20 cm thick steel tank contains liquid water at 300 ° C under a pressure of 155 bars. In this water is bathed the nuclear fuel which produces the flow of neutrons which heats it. Under this flow for 30 years, the metal of the tank is transformed, it went from the ductile (elastic) state to the brittle (brittle) state. Metal test pieces were placed in the reactor before it was closed. The measurements made on them at each opening of the tank showed that from -22 ° C, the temperature of this change of state rose to +60 under the flow of neutrons. EDF therefore no longer drops the water temperature below 80 ° C when it changes the fuel. Cracks were found in the metal of the tank at Tricastin, Fessenheim, Gravelines, St Laurent-des-Eaux.
For several years the results of the measurements made on the test pieces have been kept confidential. The state of the cracks would be stabilized (?).
On the other hand, some concrete enclosures surrounding the reactor were made with poor quality cement, as recently for the foundations of the EPR in Flamanville. They were upholstered inside with a resin coating. The vessel and the containment are the two elements that cannot be changed, so their duration fixes the date of reactor shutdown. The residents of the Fessenheim power station are asking for justice to close the two oldest reactors in the park. During the heat wave of 2003, the firefighters had to water the reactor enclosure to avoid too intense heating inside. On June 11, 2004, EDF obtained authorization to discharge water to the Rhône above 27 ° C if necessary. You should know that 14 nuclear reactors are cooled by the Rhône. On July 22, 2006 EDF noted a temperature of 26,1 ° C upstream of the Tricastin power station.
TRITIUM REJECTS
Requests for revision of the release authorization for tritium and carbon 14 took place at Cattenom in 2003, at Flamanville (EPR included) in March 2005 and at Tricastin in June 2006. While all the other revisions are down, the amount of tritium released to the cooling water would be increased by at least 40% in order to allow, in 2009, the use of a fuel with a high combustion rate (HTC). This would make it possible to space out reactor unit outages, thereby reducing maintenance costs, to the detriment of safety on reactors soon at the end of their life. If these arrangements are made for the four power stations in the Rhône valley, tritium releases will be multiplied by 5 (1,45 / 4X 14 reactors). However, this increase results from the need to increase the rate of boron and lithium necessary for slowing down the neutrons in the water of the primary cooling circuit of the reactor and that of the fuel storage pools.
During the CSSIN meeting on May 31, 2007, the representative of EDF and that of ASN assured us that the tritium concentration in the river and in the tritiated water storage tanks will be monitored by EDF. before, during and after releases. The results of these measurements will be sent to ASN. The discharges will be stopped if the concentration measured in the river exceeds 140 Bq / l. According to IRSN, the health impact on the environment would drop from 0,06 microSv / year / inhabitant to 0,09. As a reminder, this impact measured for the six cumulative Tricastin nuclear facilities (Clos Bonneau) is 27 microSv / year / inhabitant. Euratom directive 96/26 and public health regulation R1333-8 recommend <1000 microSv / year / inhabitant.
The question of tritium comes up in the news in France in several ways:
a request from EDF to increase the discharge authorizations for pressurized water reactors (PWR) by 45%, as we have just seen
commitment of the Parliament, in the law of June 2006 on nuclear waste, for a solution on the storage of packages of tritiated waste before the end of 2008,
installation of the ITER nuclear fusion project in Cadarache, producer and mass user of gaseous tritium.
This radioactive isotope of hydrogen becomes the object of all attention on the part of official institutions.
- the nuclear safety authority (ASN) created a "tritium" study group, which met for the first time on May 5, 2008,
- the permanent group “radioactive materials and waste” (GPMDR) of the national association of local information commissions (ANCLI), of which I am a member, has already been working for a year on a bibliographic research on toxicity tritium. He is organizing a conference on the subject on November 4 and 5, 2008 for CLIs.
- on October 3, the Cadarache CLI is organizing a round table on tritium with contributions from ANCLI, the Institute for Research on Nuclear Safety (IRSN), and CRIIRAD.
CANCER AROUND NUCLEAR FACILITIES
And here in December 2007, the German nuclear safety authority publishes a scientific report showing a surplus of childhood leukemia around German nuclear power plants. To balance the harmful consequences of this publication, D. Laurier, the epidemiologist of IRSN, was commissioned to carry out a worldwide bibliographic study on the subject. No less than 450 references were listed in his 200-page report. They focus exclusively on childhood leukemia around nuclear facilities around the world. They are there to drown, Dounray, Sellafield, Hinkley Point in Great Britain, Kruemel in Germany, even La Hague in Cotentin, in a flood of results declared insignificant.
When, in June 2006, I filed on behalf of Frapna in the public inquiry file on Georges Besse II, the new uranium enrichment plant, a request for the investigation of cancers around Pierrelatte, I did not think raise such a bitter debate. After three meetings of national and local experts, the decision to finance this study up to € 50 was taken on July 000, 4 by the CLI of Tricastin. As a result, IRSN created another commission of experts, including myself, to develop a method for the use of CLIs wishing to know the state of health of residents living near nuclear installations. She has already sat four times. It must be said here that a debate is developing in the scientific community (between the Academies of Medicine, that of Sciences, the International Commission for Research on Cancer, on the one hand, and defenders of the Environment, on the other part) on the environmental origin of cancers. This, since the asbestos affair.
This debate is the subject of another of my reports, under the title "Do we really want to protect ourselves from cancer?" ",
that I hold at your disposal.
To conclude on the state support for the nuclear lobby, we can mention a decision, recent among many others, of the President of the Republic, to set up an interministerial permanent council in charge of energy choices for France. Is this the end of the ancestral power of the Corps des Mines and the PEON commission created after the Second World War?
(1) read Menace sur le vivant, the nuclear plutonium sector by JPMorichaud published by Yves Michel, 5 allée du Torrent- 05000 GAP, tel: 0492655224, new edition revised in October 2008.
in red: this is why the project went through in force on so-called transparency-defense secret
in blue: that is why they absolutely want to bury all this waste in France, "final solution"
This is what awaits us, even more pollution and risks, when the decision is made at the dawn of all the leaks that we have known ... chance or coincidence? nature speaks to us?
I hope I have warned you of some of these risks that await us all tomorrow.
provocation ?? 
