Nuclear plant leak head sacked
After reports of ‘grave errors’ the director of a nuclear plant which leaked radioactive material will be replaced.
The director of a nuclear power plant which leaked radioactive waste into water supplies has been sacked.
The head of Socatri, the firm in charge of the power plant, Yves André is to be replaced announced Anne Lauvergeon, the head of Areva, which owns Socatri.
She is visiting the Tricastin nuclear reactor this afternoon.
The leakage occurred when liquid was transferred from one container to another at the Tricastin site, which has a nuclear reactor as well as a radioactive treatment plant.
While the leak registered at level one, on a scale with seven as the worst, a subsequent investigation by Areva and the l'Autorité de sûreté nucléaire (ASN) revealed ‘grave problems’ in the plant’s organisation.
Residents in the Vaucluse region of southern France have been told not to drink water or eat fish from nearby rivers after the liquid uranium spill on July 7.
Swimming and water sports have also been forbidden along with irrigation of crops with the contaminated water.
Tricastin is in the town of Bollene in the Vaucluse, some 50 kilometres from the city of Avignon.
French authorities last week ordered the closure of a nuclear treatment facility at the plant.
Ecology minister Jean-Louis Borloo has ordered tests of the ground water near all of the country's 58 nuclear reactors after the leak.
"I don't want people to feel that we are hiding anything from them," said the minister.
While the spill at Tricastin took place at a treatment facility and did not affect the reactor, Borloo stressed that in the area of nuclear energy "there is no room for negligence."
Following tests, the IRSN nuclear safety institute said it had pinpointed four areas where there are abnormally high levels of uranium in the ground water and that this could not have been caused by the Tricastin leak alone.
A separate commission has raised the possibility that the contamination may be linked to military nuclear waste buried in at an underground storage site from 1964 to 1976 at the Tricastin plant.
Photo: Afp Fred Dufour
