Word: nuclearization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Friday France's Nuclear Safety Agency (ASN) revealed that damage to an underground conduit at the Romans-sur-Isère plant in southwestern France had allowed radioactive waste to leak, though in quantities so small, it said, to have "not at all affected the environment." But it was not the first such incident. The ASN announced July 7 that uranium-tainted waste liquids from the Tricastin nuclear plant, in southern France 30 miles northwest of Avignon, had leaked into surrounding rivers and topsoil. Inhabitants of the Vaucluse department were ordered to refrain from drinking water, eating locally caught fish...
...Fighting words indeed - and over much more than simply safe drinking water. Nearly 80% of France's electricity is nuclear-generated, and French giant Areva has made a massive international business of constructing and managing nuclear facilities. France has made nuclear power a national priority since the early 1970s as French governments of all political stripes sought to lessen the nation's dependence on foreign oil. The French public embraced nukes as the rest of Europe and the world said "no thanks." The result is France today has the second-largest nuclear network behind the U.S., and is the world...
...that has helped Areva become a world leader in the nuclear field, providing one-stop shopping with construction, management, maintenance, waste and storage solutions. Under president Anne Lauvergeon, the firm has been an aggressive player everywhere from China to Britain and a formidable rival to American companies General Electric and Westinghouse even on American turf. However, news of nuclear incidents anywhere on the planet - particularly in Areva's own backyard - tends to squelch the appeal of nuclear power, record oil prices...
...What is troubling about both recent French accidents is that they involved nuclear waste, the disposal of which is perhaps the major curb to nuclear power's appeal. Areva cited human error in the Tricastin incident and said it had fired the responsible director after an internal investigation found "evident lack of coordination" between administrative and working units had allowed contaminated waste to seep through the plant's theoretically impenetrable safety lining. Areva also faulted local operators for significant delays in alerting authorities once the breach had been identified...
...incident involved smaller quantities of radioactive matter and was caused by an entirely different problem than the Tricastin case. But the agency also noted the leak discovered Friday may have first occurred "several years back." Environmental groups have cited the breaches as more evidence of nuclear power's spotty safety record, and anti-nuke organization Greenpeace noted the government's "belated concern" reflected its unquestioning confidence in the technology's reliability...