Environment, Europe, Headlines

ENVIRONMENT-FRANCE: Dangerous Summer for Nuclear Power Plants

Julio Godoy* - Tierramérica

PARIS, Jul 9 2005 (IPS) - The northern hemisphere’s summer began officially just a few weeks ago, but the high temperatures already recorded in France could prompt the shutdown of some of the 58 nuclear reactors that supply 80 percent of the country’s energy.

On Jun. 23, Electricite de France (EDF), the government electrical power monopoly that controls the nuclear facilities, was on the verge of disconnecting the Tricastin plant, located in southeast France on the Rhone River, because the temperature of the water discharged by the reactor cooling system surpassed 25 degrees centigrade, the maximum allowed under the country’s environmental laws.

According to those rules and nuclear safety standards, the reactors must be shut down if the temperature inside rises above 50 degrees, or if the volume of the water flow falls below certain limits.

The temperatures of the water outflow also must be kept below 25 degrees in order to protect aquatic life around the power stations, and the water should not heat up more than two degrees from the time it enters until it leaves the reactor.

According to Stephane Lhomme, spokesman for the French anti-nuclear association Sortir du Nucléare, it is possible to predict already that at least one of the conditions for shutdown will be met this summer, with the high temps that are part of an unprecedented drought affecting Europe since late last year.

"France finds itself in a situation of pre-nuclear accident," he said in a conversation with Tierramérica.

The activist noted that in summer of 2003, when France suffered a record-setting heatwave, several nuclear plants reached the point of having to shut down. One was the Fessenheim, the country’s oldest, located in the northeastern region of Alsace, bordering Germany.

In August 2003, temperatures inside the Fessenheim plant reached 50 degrees, and the facility’s authorities ordered high pressure hoses to wet down the exterior walls – a rather primitive method to cool off the reactor in an era of advanced technology.

Other nuclear power plants in France dumped water heated to more than 25 degrees into the rivers.

Because so many power plants faced similar conditions, the government decided at the time to lift the limits on maximum water temperatures and on minimum water flows. According to Lhomme, the southwestern nuclear plant at Blayais, on the Gironda River estuary, committed 50 infractions in 2003.

In these early days of summer, many regions of France are already reporting temperatures above 35 degrees centigrade. The government’s weather agency, Météo-France, has declared a third-degree alert, out of a maximum of four, in 12 of the 96 mainland departments due to the heat.

In the Rhone valley, which runs from Switzerland to the Mediterranean and with five nuclear power plants along the river, the ambient temperature is already reaching an average of 35 degrees, and the temperature of the river itself more than 20 degrees.

In the region of Vienne, some 500 km southwest of Paris, the river of the same name has dried to a trickle – so much so that local authorities have ordered strict rationing of water use.

The Civaux nuclear plant, on the banks of the Vienne, takes in around 350,000 cubic meters of water per day when in full operation. Due to the drought, the facility should have been shut down already.

About 30 French departments have established similar limits for water use.

However, the EDF director for environment and sustainable development, Claude Jeandron, says he feels no worries about the prospects for an extremely hot summer.

According to Yves Boulaigue, drought expert for the state-run Nuclear Security Agency, "the low flow volume of the rivers does not pose a safety problem… (because) all power plants have water reserves for the cooling process, to ensure their autonomy."

Disconnecting one or several nuclear plants would create a huge energy problem, given that in the summer, especially one that is very warm and dry, there is a decline in output from hydroelectric power plants, the country’s second leading energy source. Shutdowns would mean importing electricity, as France was forced to do in 2003.

Unofficial estimates about those imports are that it cost EDF around 300 million euros (more than 360 million dollars). The state energy company refuses to comment on the figure, but decided to insure itself against possible losses in 2005 for the sum of 550 million euros.

In any case, "we can’t insure ourselves against the environmental risks, and those are something we all face," says Lhomme.

That is why the French anti-nuclear activists continue to warn against dependence on the reactors, and Sortir de Nucléaire has filed several denunciations in French courts against the nuclear authorities, charging that they have violated their own environmental and safety standards.

"Summer 2003 already proved that the promises made by the defenders of nuclear energy are false. Atomic energy is not going to reduce global warming, but – irony of our climate problems – that warming does reduce the capacity for utilizing atomic energy," said Lhomme.

(* Julio Godoy is an IPS correspondent. Originally published Jul. 2 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)