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Champagne water in radioactive danger
Diet Simon - 04.03.2007 09:06
Greenpeace is warning that the nuclear waste centre in Soulaines in eastern France is endangering the growing of champagne grapes. Less than ten kilometres from the famous vineyards of the Champagne the groundwater is polluted with radioactive tritium.
Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen. A website of Idaho State University ( http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/tritium.htm) writes that “The radioactive decay product of tritium is a low energy beta that cannot penetrate the outer dead layer of human skin. Therefore, the main hazard associated with tritium is internal exposure. In addition, due to the relatively long half life and short biological half life, tritium must be ingested in large amounts to pose a significant health risk.”
The topical reason for the warning about the Centre Stockage de l'Aube (CSA) is the current debate in the French parliament of the new atomic waste act.
Tritium is seeping out of the dump and tests have shown that the groundwater near it is already contaminated.
About 50 years after nuclear energy production began, it is clear that France is in the thick of a nuclear waste crisis. For a long time the government and industry have neglected the problem. Now it’s catching up with them.
Only last week Greenpeace published a report by the French laboratory ACRO that proves tritium is seeping into the groundwater from an older dump near La Hague in Normandy.
Since 1994 weak and medium-active waste is no longer dumped at La Hague, where spent fuel is reprocessed and plutonium produced, but in Soulaines.
The CSA dump is designed for more than a million cubic metres of nuclear waste. When it’s finished it’ll be one of the biggest in the world.
Greenpeace says the dump is an assault on the Champagne winegrowers and their livelihood.
I’ve seen a report only on the German Greenpeace website, www.greenpeace.de, so you might want to read more on this issue there if you know German. I have asked for the English and French versions of the report and will reference them here as soon as I’ve had answers.
The international Greenpeace site already has a report on how the management of nuclear waste has been largely neglected in France, where 70% of the power supply is nuclear-fuelled. “Even today, large quantities of waste remain in unconditioned and unstable form, inventories of historical dump sites are lacking or were lost and one of the largest dump sites in the world near the La Hague reprocessing plant is leaking into the underground water.” That “briefing document” of 30 May 2006 is available at http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/nuclear-waste-crisis-france. For more on the dump at Bure mentioned in it go to http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/08/118772.php.
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