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French nuke could have had a meltdown
Diet Simon - 16.04.2004 21:30
Source story  http://germany.indymedia.org/2004/04/80049.shtml
France’s oldest nuclear power station has recently had technical mishaps of a kind that could lead to the worst possible nuclear disaster on the scale of Harrisburg 25 years ago.
So says Freiburg-based Axel Mayer, a regional director of BUND, the German affiliate of Friends of the Earth.
He was commenting in an interview with the newspaper, Junge Welt, on 300 litres of resin being pumped by mistake into the primary cooling system around the fuel rods and clogging up crucial filters.
Concentrated cross-border nuclear madness.
An anti-nuclear Tour de France
Mayer answered, “yes” when asked whether a Harrisburg-style meltdown could have happened.
“But people on both sides of the Rhine are also worried because almost any aircraft could destroy Fessenheim,” Mayer said. The interview is posted (in German) at http://www.jungewelt.de/2004/04-02/018.php.
Demonstrators from three countries will gather at the plant on 24 April to demand that it be switched off. The protest will start at 2 p.m.. The town will also be the starting point of a cross-border anti-nuclear tour with info buses and other features.
The tour and demo are also against the plans of the German company Siemens and the French company Framatrom (AREVA) to build more nuclear power stations. The activists criticise a nuclear renaissance.
Activists point out that Fessenheim is operating beyond its originally scheduled life span and poses a growing danger to people in Alsace-Lorraine (France), Luxembourg and Switzerland.
“The plant is illegal because it no longer meets the legal norms for earth quake security (did it ever?). There were recently two sequential earthquakes here and we’re not protected against even stronger quakes. There’s been a series of technical mishaps in the cooling agent circulation of the plant. A collapse of the cooling system would cause the reactor core to melt – the worst possible imaginable nuclear accident that would wipe an entire region off the map!
“As a result of the climate warming the water of the Rhine is getting too warm to adequately cool the power plant. The artificial raining tinkered by the operators last year was described as totally inadequate even by the French nuclear safety authority.
“The literal playing with fire! EDF [the state-owned French power monopolist] prefers to remain silent about the dangers to safeguard its investments and to put off until later the enormous problems of dismantling the nuclear power stations.
“Accidents are increasing. Last January and February 13 workers were irradiated. Does there have to be a catastrophe first before those responsible wake up out of their lethargy?”
#file_x# where
The 24/25 April weekend will be the prologue to the Tour de France antinucléaire, which will start symbolically on 26 April, the anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
It will touch on civilian and military nuclear installations and alternative projects up to Penly, the intended location of a new EPR reactor type. The caravan of the tour will offer presentations by artists and information functions to raise awareness of the insanity of nuclear power.
The programme on 24 and 25 April in detail:
· Saturday, 2 p.m., meet outside the Fessenheim mayor’s offices. Then demo to the nuke. Bring drumming instruments! From 6.30 p.m. stands and catering in Kaysersberg, about 40 km away. 9.30 p.m.: “Chernobyl now!” with the theatre group “Brut de béton?”, based on the book "La Supplication" by Svetlana Alexievich. Camping possible next to the functions grounds.
· Sunday: Kaysersberg 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.: Forum and discussions, stands and exhibitions, catering (organic), concerts by local groups (4 p.m.: the music group " Mange moi").
Placards and the exact route of the Tour de France for nuclear abandoning are available from the French Reseau sortir du nucleaire, www.sortirdunucleaire.org.
More information on Fessenheim is also available at www.bund-freiburg.de.
Information on imminent nuclear waste transports in Germany is at www.wigatom.de, www.castor.de and
http://germany.indymedia.org/2004/04/80246.shtml.
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