ACDN MEDIA RELEASE
17 February 2011

The Brennilis reactor was built by France’s Atomic Energy Commissariat from 1962 onwards in order to make experiments for the “French filiere” [pathway] of nuclear energy generation (which was later abandoned, in 1971). It has a nominal power of 70MW and was periodically linked into the EDF electricity grid between 1967 and 1985. In all, it operated for the equivalent of a dozen years, and was definitively shut down in 1965. Its complete dismantling, the first of its kind in France, was supposed to “serve as a shop-window”. But the operation was subject to interruptions, incidents, years of delay: 25 years later it is still not completed.

The most delicate phase, phase three, including the dismantling of the reactor bloc and the reactor building, has not yet started. It was suspended in 2007 when the Council of State cancelled a governmental decree of 2006, and then by the unfavourable conclusion to a public inquiry carried out in 2009. Today there is new talk of starting the first step of phase 3 (dismantling the thermic exchangers) even though the complete radiological inventory of the site has not been done, despite being recommended by the Public Inquiry Commission in 2009 (Cf. Le Télégramme, 15 et 16 février 2011).

The dismantling of France’s oldest and smallest nuclear plant is thought to have already cost some 500 million euros, and the main part of it is still not done. There are 58 other reactors in service at present, with powers ranging from 900 to 1500 MW. Nobody knows how to go about dismantling them or what can be done with the millions of tonnes of resulting waste, let alone how much that will cost and who will pay.

EDF (Electricity of France) claimed that with its nuclear plants it could deliver the most economical KWh possible. Now that it will have to provide electricity to its competitors, it admits that it will have to incorporate into the costing of a nuclear KWh the amortisation and dismantling of the plants, and therefore will have to sell at 46 euro-cents, or even 55 euro-cents once the EPR is built and operating – as against 17 to 20 euro-cents in Belgium or in Finland. (Cf. Les Échos, 16/02/2011) Look for the mistake… or the lie!

In its report in January 2005 the Cour des comptes (Audit Office) noted: « Since the dismantling, production and stocking of wastes are matters closely linked to future French nuclear policy, an overall view is needed, and is sorely lacking ».

So, nobody has an overall view. These guys don’t know where they’re going, but they keep going on. That’s been the way of it, ever since the beginning of the “Nuclear Adventure.”