French power stations ‘safest’

FRENCH nuclear power stations are the “safest in the world”, says President Sarkozy.

The president has sought to calm fears of a nuclear accident in France after earthquake damage to power stations in Japan.

He added there was “no question” of France abandoning nuclear energy, as green party Europe Ecologie-Les Verts has been demanding.

Referring to 2009, when France lost a bid for a multi-billion euro deal to build power stations in the United Arab Emirates, he reportedly told fellow UMP chiefs: “If we have lost markets and invitations to tender, it is because we are the most expensive and, if we are the most expensive, it is because we are the safest.”

He added that the new generation of French power stations was so safe a Boeing 747 could crash into one without damaging the reactor, because they have a “double shell”.

Prime Minister François Fillon reportedly called the Ecologists’ use of the Japanese disaster to launch an anti-nuclear campaign “absolutely shameful, when there are tens of thousands of people dead in Japan”.

However Sortir du Nucléaire, a national network of parties and associations opposed to nuclear power, said in a statement that “the nationality of a rector makes no difference to its structural dangerousness”.

Green campaigner Nicolas Hulot, a possible 2012 presidential candidate, has said there should be a referendum on nuclear power.

Energy Minister Eric Besson has admitted that “there has been a serious nuclear accident [in Japan] because there have been radioactive leaks”, but he insisted “it is not a catastophe”.

He said a referendum was premature. “I am not about to sound the alarm bells unless something really major happens,” he said.

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Photo: Medef