Nuclear Nightmares: What About France?

Nuclear power was still heavily disputed decades ago when carbon emissions were not an issue. The objections were many-fold: To all of which, I have a one-word reply: France.

France generates 77% of its power with nuclear plants. And yet, her people stubbornly refuse to die of cancer or other radiation diseases in higher numbers than anywhere. The plants have declined to blow up. Or kill anybody any other way.

I just tried the Google search "nuclear power france accidents". The top link was this one, to Major Nuclear Power Plant Accidents. It lists France's worst nuclear accident as the three workers contaminated after walking into a nuclear particle accelerator (a research facility) without their protective clothing.

The second link was about two accidents that raised questions by happening just days apart. Nobody was actually hurt. The article was from the New York Times. In 1987.

Whatever the long-term issues with waste disposal, it hasn't hurt the vinyards or anybody else so far.

France does have high power costs than North America, discussed here. The actual figures from that article:

EdF early in 2009 estimated that its reactors provide power at EUR 4.6 cents/kWh and the energy regulator CRE puts the figure at 4.1 c/kWh. The weighted average of regulated tariffs is EUR 4.3 c/kWh. Power from the new EPR units is expected to cost about EUR 5.5 to 6.0 c/kWh.

The worst number there, 0.06 Euro/kWh, equates to about Canadian 8.5 cents/kWh, whereas Albertans can generally buy that power for around 7-8 cents. The regulator's figure of 4.1 Euro-cents/kWh = Cdn 5.8 cents/kWh.

If France is achieving these figures by subsidy, they don't mind subsidizing foreigners, since they sell billions of Euros per year. They'd have to really cook the books, since they claim to be selling at a profit. Nuclear power has become more expensive recently, as the change from the old 4.6 cts to the "new reactors" 8.5 cents shows. Nuclear costs are almost all construction costs, since they cost little to fuel or operate - and construction costs have soared in recent years. But even so, they are only up to 8.5 cts/kWh, high, but not intolerable.

So if you can have low construction costs, nuclear would become much cheaper. There is the Chinese nuclear program, which the wikipedia link summarizes with "The country is expected to build around 22 reactors in the five years ending 2010 and projected to build 132 units after and has the most aggressive nuclear power expansion program in the world." This is not a country concerned with global warming; they are opening the worst kind of "brown coal" plants at the rate of one a week. If they are opening hundreds of billions of dollars worth of nuclear plants also, it must be because they think they can make payback - even compared to cheap coal plants.

But it is the other wikipedia article, Nuclear Power in France that amazed even me. I had assumed that the French had just steamrolled their nuclear strategy through, leaving a significant anti-nuclear faction that had been brewing and growing for 30 years as the dirty laundry came out and the accidents and spills added up.

Instead, the section on public opinion runs like this:

Historically, nuclear power was supported by the Gaullists, the Socialist Party and the Communist Party. A 2001 Ipsos poll found that 70% of the French population had a "good opinion" of nuclear energy in France and 63% want their country to remain a nuclear leader.[14] According to reporter Jon Palfreman, the construction of the Civaux Nuclear Power Plant was welcomed by the local community in 1997: In France, unlike in America, nuclear energy is accepted, even popular. Everybody I spoke to in Civaux loves the fact their region was chosen. The nuclear plant has brought jobs and prosperity to the area. Nobody I spoke to, nobody, expressed any fear.

That, apparently, is what a generation growing up with 77% nuclear power thinks. They have no fear of the fuel or waste storage or transportation, even though they transport over 10,000 tonnes per year of fuel to their power plants (4,500 from Canada), and deal with 10,000 tonnes of waste coming out.

And they do believe the greenhouse-gas figures, even their environmentalists:

In the same Ipsos poll, 88 percent of the population believe that reducing the greenhouse effect was a major reason to continue using nuclear power.[14] French environmentalist Bruno Comby started the group Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy, and says, "If well-managed, nuclear energy is very clean, does not create polluting gases in the atmosphere, produces very little waste and does not contribute to the greenhouse effect".

I went googling with "french anti nuclear" power organizations (to distinguish from anti-Bomb activists) and I'm still looking. I did stumble across an article "French Cling to the Nuclear Dream" that lamented "France is unique not only in the extent to which the government has committed itself to a nuclear course, but in the degree to which the French public seems to have accepted the risks of nuclear power. According to a poll released in January by the Swedish Institute for Opinion Research, fully 64 percent of the French population supports nuclear energy, and only 27 percent oppose it." Then I looked to the top of the page and it was from 1986. Apparently, they were clinging to the dream then, and are still "clinging" a third of a century later. From the Wikipedia: "A 2001 Ipsos poll found that 70% of the French population had a "good opinion" of nuclear energy in France and 63% want their country to remain a nuclear leader."

In short, support has gone up the longer the power stations sit there, the more fuel that is shipped to them, the more waste that is disposed of. In a country that most would describe as pretty lefty compared to Canada, much less the States, and is not shy of street demonstrations.

That alone hints to me that the high costs and high carbon output of a nuclear industry cannot be the problem Dr. Caldicott suggests; if they were, the few French anti-nuclear activists would have more to work with. Somebody would have "followed the money" by now; and somebody else would have "followed the carbon".