With a renewed debate about whether Ireland should go nuclear, Frank McDonald, Environment Editor, went to France to see its latest reactor under construction
The French have few qualms about nuclear power. It provides nearly 80 per cent of their electricity - the highest proportion anywhere in the world - and now they've started building a new generation of nuclear reactors to replace the ones that have been supplying them since the late 1970s.
The first of these European pressurised water reactors (EPR) is under construction at Flamanville, on the Cherbourg peninsula in Normandy. Raided by Greenpeace activists last April, the site is surrounded by a triple razor-wire fence that's patrolled constantly by Electricité de France (EDF) security personnel.
THE 1,600-MEGAWATT reactor is being built alongside two older and smaller pressurised water reactors, which produce enough electricity to meet the annual consumption of Brittany and lower Normandy combined; Breton protests ensured that not one of France's 58 existing reactors is located in Brittany.
The 120-hectare (288-acre) Flamanville site is located on the seaward side of cliffs that rise to a height of 70 metres, so it has no visibility in the landscape. In the past, it was a granite quarry that supplied the paving stones for Place de la Concorde in Paris and, more recently, the landfall for an extensive under-sea iron mine.
The English Channel (La Manche to the French) provides an endless supply of cooling water for the two reactors. Cap La Hague, which serves the same purpose as Sellafield in dealing with radioactive waste, is within sight of the power station. It also has local political and public support because of its positive economic impact.
"There is no opposition here to building this third unit," says Philippe Petiot, manager of the Flamanville power station. EDF owns the land and a site had been set aside for the new reactor. And because it is located on the coast, "construction is easier and you don't need cooling towers [ for water]", he explains.
Petiot says the EPR reactor - billed as the most powerful in the world - would operate for 60 years (compared to 40 for existing reactors), burn 17 per cent less uranium fuel, reduce radioactive waste by 30 per cent, cut "downtimes" by half and boost electricity generation from the power station by 36 per cent.
The project has a price tag of €3.3 billion. "Yes, the price of this investment at first is very expensive, but the cost of electricity is very low," says Petiot. "We have the lowest electricity price in Europe. Only hydro is cheaper [ than nuclear]" - and that's even allowing for EDF's contribution to running Cap La Hague.
EDF puts the thorny issue of nuclear waste in perspective by saying that total waste from its reactors amounts to less than 1kg per capita per annum, including 10 grammes of highly radioactive waste.
And thanks to nuclear, EDF emits the lowest level of carbon dioxide of any electricity generator in Europe.
LIKE BRITAIN, FRANCE got into nuclear energy in the 1950s as an adjunct to its weapons programme. But following the 1973-74 oil crisis, the French government decided to go bald-headed for nuclear to make the country more self-sufficient. And unlike oil, uranium could be sourced in stable countries, such as Canada.
In the 1960s, France was importing 76 per cent of its energy needs. But since the first of the current generation of nuclear power stations were commissioned from 1979 onwards, its level of energy self-sufficiency went up from 24 per cent to 50 per cent, and EDF now exports 10 per cent of the electricity it generates.
At Flamanville, "the first priority is safety", according to Petiot. There's an emergency plan to deal with accidents and local people have been advised that they should stay indoors until they are picked up and taken to a safe place. But, so far, there has never been an accident at any French nuclear power station.
Security has been stepped up since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC. There are no longer any public tours of the plant, only carefully controlled groups and press visits. A 3km exclusion zone is maintained by the French air force, and the navy is also on standby to deal with sea incursions.
Nonetheless, the exclusion zone was breached last year by a Greenpeace protester in a "pego-jet", a powered parachute. And in April, to mark the 21st anniversary of Chernobyl, 30 Greenpeace activists used two trucks to block the entrance to the EPR construction site and climbed tower cranes to unfurl protest banners.
The protest followed revelations in a leaked internal security report that the new EPR could not withstand the impact of a large commercial passenger aircraft from either a deliberate act of terrorism or an accident. EDF's existing 58 reactors are also unable to withstand large aircraft impact, according to the document.
A study commissioned by Greenpeace from British nuclear consultant John Large found that EPR reactors have an "inherently higher risk of serious radioactive contamination" in the event of an accident: in the case of Flamanville, he estimated that 660,000 people would require evacuation after the "most likely" type of incident.
Twin 400KV power lines that pass close to the school in Flamanville village, just 2km away, are the only visible evidence of the nuclear power plant. Returning to Paris by train after my visit, I saw heavily reinforced tanks carrying the radioactive material, uranyl nitrate, on rail freight wagons at a station just north of Bayeux.
Whatever about such risks, the French government remains fully committed to nuclear energy. Following just four months of public consultation in mid-2006, involving 21 public meetings, approval was given for the EPR project at Flamanville and construction started last December.