Amid fears of nuclear terrorism, accidents and the erosion of free speech in France’s state of emergency, a coalition of 20 groups from across the top half of France held a rare mass antinuclear protest (Oct 1-2) in the most nuclearized part of the country on Normandy’s English Channel coast. Arriving by busload, shared car and bicycles, thousands converged on a tiny conservative seaside village to vent their opposition to France’s pro-nuclear “orthodoxy” and shake a fist at the industrial giant. Shaun Burnie, a Scotsman with a brogue, said the French nuclear industry is in big trouble. A longtime Greenpeace specialist usually based in Japan, Burnie rattled off a laundry list of issues afflicting it– spent fuel storage problems, radioactive wastewater releases, plutonium transports, drone flights over plants. “La Hague has 12,000 tons of spent fuel. It dumps ten million liters of radioactive water a year into the sea; 160 kg of plutonium oxide powder leave the plant twice a week,” Burnie said of the waste plant dominating the horizon. And Greenpeace just released a “catastrophic” report alleging falsified data and flawed reactor vessel steel in many French reactors, including the EPR, he said. On hand were several British activists. Allan Jeffery, assistant coordinator of Stop Hinkley, called for “a world with clean, decentralized, renewable energy.” Nikki Clark of SWAN (SouthWest Against Nuclear) said it’s time to turn away from “technocratic dynosaurs.”
Alternet 5th Oct 2016 read more »