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Last Updated: Aug 8, 2008 - 8:36:24 AM |
On a typical day, Monsieur
Rambault, the baker, is up before dawn turning out baguettes and
croissants. Shortly after, teacher Rene Barc opens the small school.
There is a blacksmith, a hairdresser, a post office, a general store
and a couple of bars. But overlooking the picturesque hamlet are two
giant cooling towers from a nuclear plant, still under construction, a
half-mile away. When the Civaux nuclear power plant comes on line
sometime in the next 12 months, France will have 56 working nuclear
plants, generating 76% of her electricity.
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. From the village school teacher,
Rene Barc, to the patron of the Cafe de Sport bar, Valerie Turbeau, any
traces of doubt they might have had have faded as they have come to
know plant workers, visited the reactor site and thought about the
benefits of being part of France's nuclear energy effort.
France's decision to launch a large nuclear program dates back to 1973
and the events in the Middle East that they refer to as the "oil
shock." The quadrupling of the price of oil by OPEC nations was indeed
a shock for France because at that time most of its electricity came
from oil burning plants. France had and still has very few natural
energy resources. It has no oil, no gas and her coal resources are very
poor and virtually exhausted.
French policy makers saw only one way for France to achieve energy
independence: nuclear energy, a source of energy so compact that a few
pounds of fissionable uranium is all the fuel needed to run a big city
for a year. Plans were drawn up to introduce the most comprehensive
national nuclear energy program in history. Over the next 15 years
France installed 56 nuclear reactors, satisfying its power needs and
even exporting electricity to other European countries.
There were some protests in the early 70s, but since then (with one
important exception discussed below), the nuclear program has been
popular and remarkably non controversial. How was France able to get
its people to accept nuclear power? What is about French culture and
politics that allowed them to succeed where most other countries have
failed?
Claude Mandil, the General Director for Energy and Raw Materials at the
Ministry of Industry, cites at least three reasons. First, he says, the
French are an independent people. The thought of being dependent for
energy on a volatile region of the world such as the Middle East
disturbed many French people. Citizens quickly accepted that nuclear
might be a necessity. A popular French riposte to the question of why
they have so much nuclear energy is "no oil, no gas, no coal, no
choice."
Second, Mandil cites cultural factors. France has a tradition of large,
centrally managed technological projects. And, he says, they are
popular. "French people like large projects. They like nuclear for the
same reasons they like high speed trains and supersonic jets."
Part of their popularity comes from the fact that scientists and
engineers have a much higher status in France than in America. Many
high ranking civil servants and government officials trained as
scientists and engineers (rather than lawyers, as in the United
States), and, unlike in the U.S. where federal administrators are often
looked down upon, these technocrats form a special elite. Many have
graduated from a few elite schools such as the Ecole Polytechnic.
According to Mandil, respect and trust in technocrats is widespread.
"For a long time, in families, the good thing for a child to become was
an engineer or a scientist, not a lawyer. We like our engineers and our
scientists and we are confident in them."
Thirdly, he says, the French authorities have worked hard to get people
to think of the benefits of nuclear energy as well as the risks. Glossy
television advertising campaigns reinforce the link between nuclear
power and the electricity that makes modern life possible. Nuclear
plants solicit people to take tours--an offer that six million French
people have taken up. Today, nuclear energy is an everyday thing in
France.
Many polls have been taken of French public opinion and most find that
about two-thirds of the population are strongly in favor of nuclear
power. It's not that the French don't have a gut fear of nuclear power.
Psychologist Paul Slovic and his colleagues at Decision Research in
Eugene, Oregon, discovered in their surveys that many French people
have similar negative imagery and fears of radiation and disaster as
Americans. The difference is that cultural, economic and political
forces in France act to counteract these fears.
For example, while French citizens cannot control nuclear technology
anymore than Americans, the fact that they trust the technocrats that
do control it makes them feel more secure. Then there is need. Most
French people know that life would be very difficult without nuclear
energy. Because they need nuclear power more than us, they fear it
less.
Civaux baker Jacques Rambault, admits that this technology is
potentially dangerous and needs skillful management. As Chernobyl
showed, the Russians, he says, were not "up to the task. But the French
scientists and engineers are." For other citizens, rubbing shoulders
with workers at the plant has made this once exotic technology an
everyday thing. Many other risks concern them more. Madame Schoumacher,
who has lived in Civaux most of her life, says "I would be much more
frightened living next to a dam [France has about 12% hydroelectric
power] or getting into her car in the morning." Others like bar owner
Alain Cauvin cite "mad cow disease as being much scarier than nuclear
power.
Ironically, the French nuclear program is based on American technology.
After experimenting with their own gas-cooled reactors in the 1960s,
the French gave up and purchased American Pressurized Water Reactors
designed by Westinghouse. Sticking to just one design meant the 56
plants were much cheaper to build than in the US. Moreover, management
of safety issues was much easier: the lessons from any incident at one
plant could be quickly learned by managers of the other 55 plants. The
"return of experience" says Mandil is much greater in a standardized
system than in a free for all, with many different designs managed by
many different utilities as we have in America.
Things were going very well until the late 80s when another nuclear
issue surfaced that threatened to derail their very successful program:
nuclear waste.
French technocrats had never thought that the waste issue would be much
of a problem. From the beginning the French had been recycling their
nuclear waste, reclaiming the plutonium and unused uranium and
fabricating new fuel elements. This not only gave energy, it reduced
the volume and longevity of French radioactive waste. The volume of the
ultimate high-level waste was indeed very small: the contribution of a
family of four using electricity for 20 years is a glass cylinder the
size of a cigarette lighter. It was assumed that this high-level waste
would be buried in underground geological storage and in the 80s French
engineers began digging exploratory holes in France's rural regions.
To the astonishment of France's technocrats, the populations in these
regions were extremely unhappy. There were riots. The same rural
regions that had actively lobbied to become nuclear power plant sites
were openly hostile to the idea of being selected as France's nuclear
waste dump. In retrospect, Mandil says, it's not surprising. It's not
the risk of a waste site, so much as the lack of any perceived benefit.
"People in France can be proud of their nuclear plants, but nobody
wants to be proud of having a nuclear dustbin under its feet." In 1990,
all activity was stopped and the matter was turned over to the French
parliament, who appointed a politician, Monsieur Bataille, to look into
the matter.
Christian Bataille resembles the French comedian Jacques Tati. His face
breaks into a broad grin when asked why he was appointed to this task.
"They were desperate," he says. "In France, executive power dominates
much more than in Anglo-Saxon countries. So that if the Executive asks
parliament to do something it means they are really at the end of their
ideas."
Bataille went and spoke to the people who were protesting and soon
realized that the engineers and bureaucrats had greatly misunderstood
the psychology of the French people. The technocrats had seen the
problem in technical terms. To them, the cheapest and safest solution
was to permanently bury the waste underground. But for the rural French
says Bataille, "the idea of burying the waste awoke the most profound
human myths. In France we bury the dead, we don't bury nuclear
waste...there was an idea of profanation of the soil, desecration of
the Earth."
Bataille discovered that the rural populations had an idea of
"Parisians, the consumers of electricity, coming to the countryside,
going to the bottom of your garden with a spade, digging a hole and
burying nuclear waste, permanently." Using the word permanently was
especially clumsy says Bataille because it left the impression that the
authorities were abandoning the waste forever and would never come back
to take care of it.
Fighting the objections of technical experts who argued it would
increase costs, Bataille introduced the notions of reversibility and
stocking. Waste should not be buried permanently but rather stocked in
a way that made it accessible at some time in the future. People felt
much happier with the idea of a "stocking center" than a "nuclear
graveyard". Was this just a semantic difference? No, says Bataille.
Stocking waste and watching it involves a commitment to the future. It
implies that the waste will not be forgotten. It implies that the
authorities will continue to be responsible. And, says Bataille, it
offers some possibility of future advances. "Today we stock containers
of waste because currently scientists don't know how to reduce or
eliminate the toxicity, but maybe in 100 years perhaps scientists
will."
Bataille began working on a new law that he presented to parliament in
1991. It laid plans to build 3-4 research laboratories at various
sites. These laboratories would be charged with investigating various
options, including deep geological storage, above ground stocking and
transmutation and detoxification of waste. The law calls for the labs
to be built in the next few years and then, based on the research they
yield, parliament will decide its final decision. Bataille's law
specifies 2006 as the year in which parliament must decide which
laboratory will become the national stocking center
Source:Ocnus.net 2008
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