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NUCLEAR

French nuclear incident ‘is over’: safety agency

An incident caused by a blast at a nuclear site in the south of France Monday in which one person died "is over", its regulator the national Nuclear Safety Authority said.  

Published: 12 September 2011 16:16 CEST
Updated: 12 September 2011 18:00 CEST

“This accident has no radiological risk or need for population protection,” the ASN said, adding that it had suspended its crisis cell dealing with the incident.

At least one person was killed and four injured in a blast at a nuclear site in the south of France on Monday as the government sought to play down fears of a radioactive leak.  

France’s state nuclear regulator had said earlier that there was a risk of a leak after the blast at Codolet in the Rhone Valley near the southern city of Nimes.  

Despite killing one person and wounding at least four more, the blast “did not cause any radioactive leak”, a spokesman at the energy ministry said.  

National electricity provider EDF confirmed the initial death toll following the explosion in an oven at the site.  

One of the injured is in a serious condition, ASN said.  

The blast hit the Centraco nuclear waste treatment centre belonging to EDF subsidiary Socodei, said a spokesman for the Atomic Energy Commissariat (CEA).  

“Initial reports suggest there was an explosion in an oven used to melt metallic low- and very low-level radioactive waste,” the ASN said.  

An EDF spokesman said: “This is an industrial accident, not a nuclear accident.”

“In this kind of oven, there are two sorts of waste: metallic waste such as valves, pumps and tools and combustible waste such as technicians’ work outfits or gloves,” the spokesman said.  

An expert at the Institute for Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety in Paris, Olivier Isnard, said radioactive levels in the oven were only around 17 becquerels per kilo — “very, very low” — at the time of the blast.  

“We don’t expect there to be an impact on the environment,” Isnard said, adding that samples would be taken from grass, soil and dust on cars to confirm this.  

The interior ministry said that no one was evacuated from near the site nor were any workers confined following the blast.  

Those injured “have not been contaminated” and the fatality was caused by the explosion, the ministry said.  

Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciuscko-Morizet was due to arrive at the site on Monday afternoon, her ministry said, “to help carry out a precise evaluation of the possible radiological impact of this accident”.  

“For the time being, no exterior impact has been detected,” a source at the ministry said.  

“There are several detectors on the outside and none of them detected anything, the building is sound,” an advisor at the ministry told AFP, adding that “we do not yet know what caused the blast”.  

The site is around 20 kilometres north of the historic city of Avignon which is thronged with tourists at this time of the year.  

EDF’s share price dropped over six percent on the news of the blast.  

France said in June it would invest €1 billion ($1.4 billion at the time) in future nuclear power development while boosting research into security.  

France produces most of its energy from nuclear power. Some countries, notably its EU neighbour Germany, have rejected nuclear power after the Fukushima reactor disaster in Japan.  

Environmental lobby group Greenpeace demanded total and immediate transparency from the authorities.  

“It’s essential for local populations to be informed in real time about the situation and possible radioactive discharge,” said campaigner Yannick Rousselet.  

He pointed out that the site was not covered by the audit of French nuclear sites ordered after the Fukushima disaster nor had it been part of the ASN’s latest round of inspections.

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ENERGY

Why Germany’s nuclear exit is posing tough questions about its energy future

The Bavarian village of Gundremmingen is so proud of its nuclear power station that its coat of arms is graced with a giant golden atom.

Published: 5 March 2021 09:14 CET
Updated: 5 March 2021 10:31 CET
Why Germany's nuclear exit is posing tough questions about its energy future
Gundremmingen nuclear power plant. Photo: DPA

But change is coming to the village, with the plant facing imminent closure under Germany’s energy transition policy.

Former village mayor Wolfgang Mayer’s house has direct views of the imposing complex with its two 160-metre cooling towers — taller than the spires of Cologne Cathedral.

The plant still produces 10 billion kWh of power per year, though parts of it have already been shut down — enough to provide the entire Munich metropolitan region with electricity.

The power station will be decommissioned on December 31, 2021, along with two other facilities in northern Germany.

By the end of 2022, Germany will have achieved its goal of completely phasing out nuclear power, set by Chancellor Angela Merkel on May 30, 2011, in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

SEE ALSO: Berlin agrees to compensate power firms for nuclear phase out

The plan represented a dramatic change of course by Merkel’s ruling conservatives, who just a few months earlier had agreed to extend the lifespan of Germany’s oldest power stations.

But it was met with widespread public support in a country with a powerful anti-nuclear movement, fuelled first by fears of a Cold War conflict and then by disasters such as Chernobyl.

Village church

In Gundremmingen, however, the decision has been a tough pill to swallow.

The nuclear power station has been “as much a part of the village as the church” and it feels as though “something is dying”, said Gerlinde Hutter, owner of a local guest house.

According to Meyer, it will take at least 50 years to remove all radioactive material from the site after the plant has been decommissioned.
The German government is still looking for a long-term storage site for the country’s residual nuclear waste.

Gundremmingen is not the only German village facing big changes as the country strives to implement its energy transition strategy.

Renewables have seen a spectacular rise since 2011 and in 2020 made up more than 50 percent of Germany’s energy mix for the first time, according to the Fraunhofer research institute — compared with less than 25 percent ten years ago.

The declining importance of nuclear power (12.5 percent in 2020) “has been compensated for by the expansion of renewable energies”, Claudia Kemfert, an energy expert at the DIW economic research institute, told AFP.

Nuclear power stations have therefore not been replaced by coal, though the fossil fuel does still represent almost a quarter of the electricity mix.

The gas dilemma

In fact, the phase-out of nuclear energy has been joined by another plan, announced in 2019, to close all of Germany’s coal-fired power stations by 2038.

This presents a particular challenge for Germany, which remains the world’s leading producer of lignite.

Mining for the brown coal, which is highly polluting, continues to lead to the destruction of villages in the west of the country in order to expand huge open-cast mines.

If Germany is to free itself from lignite, renewables such as wind, solar, biomass and hydropower will have to make up 65 percent of the energy mix by 2030.

Yet the country, which has long been at the forefront of wind energy in Europe, installed only 1.65 gigawatts (GW) of wind farms last year — the lowest level in a decade, according to the WindEurope advocacy group.

To meet the government’s targets, Germany would have to add 9.8 GW of solar and 5.9 GW of onshore wind annually, according to Kemfert.

But the development of new areas for wind or photovoltaic energy production is complex, with plans often coming up against resistance from local residents and the risk of damage to the landscape.

And unless storage and distribution can be improved via so-called virtual power plants, these new forms of energy do not have the same stability as thermal or nuclear power.

To secure its supply, Germany could therefore be tempted to build more gas-fired power stations.

But this would risk reinforcing its dependence on Russia, as illustrated by the controversy surrounding the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

A gas-fired power station is already in the works for the town of Leipheim, just around the corner from Gundremmingen.

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