May June1998 Editorial
The Nuclear Cover-Up
There are two scandals, both unprecedented. The first lies in the fact
that for 15 years the nuclear industry - power plants, transport companies,
plutonium factories and nuclear safety institutes in France, Germany,
Switzerland and the UK at least - have managed to hide the fact that
the international transport regulations for spent fuel shipments have
been constantly violated, up to levels exceeding several thousand times
the limit. This is all the more stunning as the original recommendation
stems from the industry friendly, heavily pro-nuclear International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. The second scandal derives from
the fact that the French nuclear safety authority DSIN has been aware
of the problem since autumn 1997, agreed with the French nuclear industry
representatives over the wording of a mere "cleanliness problem", and
kept silent until a journalistic investigation brought the story to
light. The safety authority neither informed its ministers nor its foreign
counterparts and, of course, nor did it inform the public. Worse, when
the story broke, the authority played the role of the tough transparent
State control agency finally cleaning up... without actually taking
any kind of regulatory or disciplinary consequences, while downplaying
health consequences and the persistent outrageous violation of regulations.
The action to stop the rail transport was taken by the rail company,
not by the safety authority or the government. As one of the DSIN inspectors
explains: "The nuclear companies are punished enough by the image loss
due to the media coverage".
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