GREENPEACE CONDEMNS FRENCH PLANS TO INCREASE RADIOACTIVE DISCHARGES FROM LA HAGUE NUCLEAR REPROCESSING PLANT

7 June 2000

PARIS -- Greenpeace today called upon the French Government to reject an application by the operators of the giant La Hague reprocessing plant, COGEMA, to increase its production capacity which would lead to significant increases in radioactive discharges.

Such increases in radioactive discharges, which pollute the coastline from France to the Arctic, would be contrary to Franceís international obligation under the OSPAR Convention on Marine Pollution. The OSPAR member states meet annually to adopt measures necessary to comply with the Convention. They include: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The European Union is also a member.

Greenpeace has released three new reports(1) which show that by ending reprocessing and instead adopting a policy of above ground dry storage for spent nuclear fuel France could meet its obligation under OSPAR to bring about ěsubstantial reductionsî of radioactive discharges to the sea. In addition, spent fuel storage would reduce the risk of accidental releases from the site and be significantly cheaper.

The reports have been submitted to the French Government and the OSPAR Convention. In particular they demonstrate how France could support a resolution that has been tabled by the Danish Government, with the support of Ireland, Iceland and Norway, which calls for an immediate suspension of nuclear reprocessing. The Danish proposal will be considered at the annual meeting of OSPAR which will take place in Copenhagen between June 26 and 30.

Greenpeace nuclear campaigner, Jean-Luc Thiery said: "Reprocessing makes no economic, environmental or safety sense. The government should now honour its promise from 1997 to produce a zero discharge option for the La Hague site. Such an option would inevitably involve a rejection of continued reprocessing in favour of on-site above ground dry storage." Among the conclusions of the reports are:

Operations at La Hague create large inventories of long-lived radioactive material, especially in spent fuel pools and high-level radioactive waste (HLW) facilities. For example, the stock of cesium-137 in the fuel pools and vitrified HLW stores at La Hague is hundreds of times larger than the amount of cesium-137 that was released in the 1986 Chernobyl reactor accident. About 27 kg of cesium-137 was released into the atmosphere at Chernobyl, and accounted for most of the offsite radiation exposure from this accident.

Aloss of water from a spent fuel pool at La Hague could potentially cause a radioactive release whose offsite consequences would be hundreds of times greater than the consequences of the Chernobyl accident. Spent fuel storage would reduce the hazard potential at La Hague.
* Discharges of several radio-nuclides have steadily increased in recent years. If granted the new authorisation would see the discharges of some important radionuclides, notably tritium, carbon-14, krypton-85 and iodine- 129 increase significantly.
* Collective doses are very large for La Hague discharges, comparable with some major nuclear accidents in the past and could be reduced by three or four orders of magnitude if spent fuel was stored and not reprocessed.

* Around three quarters of the spent nuclear fuel from the world's nuclear power stations is not reprocessed, but stored.

* Storage is between 2 and 3 times cheaper than reprocessing.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
- Jean-Luc Thierry 33-1-5343 8585, Greenpeace Nuclear Campaign
- Laurence Mermet 33-1-5343 8588, Greenpeace France Press Office or
- Jon Walter 31-20-523 6608, Greenpeace International Press Office