France admits to two nuclear accidents in two weeks...

...but goes ahead with Mediterranean nuclear expansion

French nuclear firm Areva admitted on Friday that two of its nuclear reactors in the south of France leaked radioactive material into the environment over the last two weeks, raising fresh doubts about the safety of nuclear technology, and the wisdom of its imminent proliferation in the Mediterranean.

Over the last year, the government of France has entered into agreements with Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco to provide these countries with nuclear technology “for peaceful purposes”. As a result nuclear reactors are set to mushroom around the southern Mediterranean littoral in the coming years.

The closest to Malta is likely to be on the coast of Libya or in Tunisia, both within a radius of a few hundred miles. Meanwhile, Italian justice minister Claudio Scajola is pressing to expand his country’s nuclear programme, while Egypt is understood to be seeking nuclear technology for a programme of its own.

But in the last 15 days alone there have been accidents in two separate nuclear reactors in the south of France. The first took place late on Monday 8 July, when the Tricastine nuclear facility in the Cote du Rhone region leaked some 30,000 cubic metres of a solution containing 12% enriched uranium into the surrounding land and two nearby rivers.

The French nuclear safety agency ASN downplayed the gravity of the incident, but residents of the vicinity were banned from bathing, drinking, and irrigating crops. Subsequent tests also showed that radiation in the groundwater may have resulted from even earlier leaks, prompting the French environment minister Jean-Louis Borloo to order tests in areas surrounding all the country’s nuclear power plants.

And on Friday 18 June, another French nuclear facility reported a leak of radioactive material, this time from an underground pipe at a nuclear plant in Romans-sur-Isere in the Drome region. Safety authorities said that the pipe, which transported liquid uranium, might have ruptured a number of years ago.

A spokesperson for the French embassy told MaltaToday that the nuclear-powered Libyan desalination plant, which will be administered by a French firm, will also be monitored by the European atomic agency, EURATOM.

Green Party spokesman on sustainable development, Carmel Cacopardo, this week said that an accident along the Libyan coast could affect us in a number of ways: “Contaminating seawater, which is the source of around 40% of Malta’s drinking water; additionally destroying what’s left of the fishing industry; and depending on the timing of such an accident, it could also deal a severe blow to Malta’s tourism.”

But as European environmental groups openly question France’s nuclear expansion policy, the government of Malta remains reluctant to seek reassurances from a friendly country that currently occupies the presidency of the European Union, and which has placed immigration – a chief cause for concern to Malta – on top of its agenda.

In the light the Maltese government’s silence on the issue, Green Party chairman Arnold Cassola is calling on Foreign Minister Tonio Borg to speak up.
“French President Sarkozy is selling nuclear technology all over the Mediterranean and the Middle East,” Cassola wrote in his blog on Friday. “Tonio Borg, where are you? Speak up now for the safety of Maltese people, please.”