Is France a nuclear wonderland?

Posted by Joshua Holland at 12:30 PM on May 2, 2006.

There are lots of comments on "Bush's Nuclear Madness" over on the front page about how France is a model of successful nuclear energy. But it's not quite the shining example that nuclear proponents would have you believe.

It's true that nuclear power plants generate almost 80 percent of France's electricity, and that by and large the French public supports it.

But the French don't want a nuclear future any more than the American public does; a poll in 2002 found that 61 percent of French respondents "would prefer to phase out nuclear energy."

They support nuclear energy but want to phase it out in the future -- how do you explain that dichotomy?

Part of the answer is waste. Another poll, in 1999, found that seven out of ten French people "tended to 'distrust' nuclear-waste management, this response being similar to that observed in Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom."

France has the same waste problems that we have. When Dick Cheney said in a speech that France was a model for how we could deal with our waste at Yucca Mountain, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research answered with a press release:

"The facts regarding the French repository program contradict Vice-President Cheney," said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of IEER, who has written widely on nuclear waste issues. "France has no repository, and their siting program faces huge domestic opposition. The controversy that surrounds waste management is a thorn in the side of the French nuclear industry."

The French government's schedule for a repository, like the U.S. schedule, is far too rapid for a careful scientific investigation required for estimating repository performance over hundreds of thousands of years, according to IEER.

The French public's desire to phase out nuclear energy brings them in line with the rest of the industrialized world:

An incident in September 1999 at a nuclear power plant in Tokaimura, Japan, provided a sharp reminder of the risks involved. Considered to be the most dangerous nuclear accident since Chernobyl, the Tokaimura incident left one employee dead and eventually compelled the Japanese government to scale back its nuclear power plant construction program. And Japan is not an isolated example. New nuclear power plant construction programs around the globe have been reduced or eliminated entirely. In Europe, nuclear energy users such as Sweden and Germany are staging a gradual withdrawal. Given this general trend, the question remains whether France can afford to go against the tide.

But France's biggest problem with nuclear energy over the long haul is the opportunity costs; France is falling behind the rest of Europe in terms of investing in clean, renewable energy.

One final note. I would have much more faith in nuclear energy in a country like France, where free-markets are embraced but free market fundamentalism doesn't reign supreme. I don't trust the firms involved in this process and I don't want "efficiency" and the profit motive to trump safety. And that's always what happens in the U.S.

GET INVOLVED: I got an e-mail from Peggy Johnson, an activist trying to build a grass-roots movement against shipping of radioactive waste across our highways and biways. She says: "My organization, Citizen Alert has been fighting the issue of transporting nuclear waste across the country to our state for 31 years. It has been a hard fought battle. We have been frustrated by the fact that we in Nevada know about the problem and people around the world know about the problem, but people who live within a half mile from a proposed transport route know nothing."

If you want to get involved, you can reach her at pmj1@citizenalert.org

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.