PARIS – French parliamentary inquiry on Thursday flagged up “failings” inthe defences of the country’s nuclear power plants, days after activistscrashed a drone into a facility to underscore safety concerns.
“When you look for failings you find them, and some are more concerningthan others,” said Barbara Pompili, a lawmaker from the governing Republicon the Move party.
France is the world’s most nuclear-dependent country, with 58 reactorsproviding 75 percent of its electricity.
Environmentalist group Greenpeace has carried out a string of break-ins atnuclear facilities in recent years to prove its claim that they arevulnerable to accidents and terror attacks.
In the latest stunt Tuesday, it flew a drone mocked up as Superman into anageing plant in Bugey, about 25 kilometres (16 miles) outside thesoutheastern city of Lyon.
The drone crashed into a building housing a storage pool for spent nuclearfuel, one of the most radioactive areas at the site.
The cross-party commission tasked with looking into nuclear safety spentfive months interviewing experts and visiting facilities, including inJapan where they reviewed measures taken after the 2011 meltdown at theFukushima nuclear plant.
The lawmakers said the number of safety incidents in France “has risensteadily”.
They cited in particular last year’s temporary shutdown of the fourreactors at a plant in Tricastin in the southeast, seen as prone toflooding in the event of an earthquake, and a blast at a facility atFlamanville in the north.
The report recommended 33 steps to improve nuclear safety, includingboosting police numbers at atomic plants and reducing the number ofsubcontractors in the industry.
– ‘We cannot verify’ –
President Emmanuel Macron has been noncommittal about a pledge by hisSocialist predecessor Francois Hollande to drastically reduce the share ofnuclear power in France’s energy mix.
Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot said in November that meeting Hollande’stargets would be “difficult” and that a rushed move to bolster the share ofrenewables could jeopardise power supplies.
Anti-nuclear campaigners argue that older plants, like the 39-year-oldBugey facility, were not built to withstand an attack from the likes of theIslamic State group or Al-Qaeda.
Greenpeace has said the pools for storing spent fuel are particularlyvulnerable.
The parliamentary report demanded that the government provide a timetablefor dismantling older plants.
It also questioned the safety of a plan to store nuclear waste deepunderground in the northeastern village of Bure and called for the numberof subcontractors in the nuclear industry to be kept to a minimum, “toimprove control over the operation of the sites”.
State energy utility EDF said the report contained “a number of errors” andsaid it would respond by mid-July.
The MPs for their part complained that many of the questions they put tothe state and EDF went unanswered, with both invoking national securityconcerns.
“We have the feeling that a lot of work is being done to protect the plantsbut we cannot verify it,” Pompili said.
France is the world’s most nuclear-dependent country, with 58 reactorsproviding 75 percent of its electricity. APP/AFP