Exactly 30 years ago, on 26 April 1986, reactor number 4 at Chernobyl exploded, and began to spread death over all the northern hemisphere, except over France where we were told that the radioactive plume was stopped at the border.
After Chernobyl there was Fukushima, on 11 March 2011. This time we couldn’t blame soviet incompetence. But the soothing claptrap of France’s leaders was still present to give us protection from nuclear disaster.
Today the President of the Republic, the PM, the Minister for the Environment, and the government as a whole are telling us that they will reduce the nuclear component in French electricity generation to 50% – but only when they will no longer be in office.
They claim they can do this by increasing the share of renewables and closing down the nuclear plants – while also keeping the nuclear electricity at its current level of 62 megawatts… and reducing overall energy consumption!
When it comes to magical hocus-pocus that could hardly be equalled!
Meanwhile they still haven’t closed the Fessenheim plant, the oldest in France, nearly 40 years old although it was planned to last only 30 years. They are waiting for it to be relieved by the Flamanville reactor, whose cost has already exceeded 10 billion euros and which still is not working after years of delay, and which will never work, given its major congenital faults (the reactor vat is close to fissuring)… unless the Nuclear Safety Authority (the ASN) is forced to give it the green light.
In fact the government is discreetly preparing to “manage” the coming nuclear catastrophe which will strike France; that is now beyond doubt. The police and the army are preparing for it. That was and still is the main object of the state of emergency[1] : to muzzle the antinuclear voices so as to control the information if a disaster occurs, i.e. to keep on feeding the people disinformation so as to prevent a massive exodus from the contaminated zones.
But the French people are increasingly hard to fool. According to an IFOP poll released on April 23, nearly 50% would like to stop the nuclear plants. And according to another IFOP poll dated October 2015, around 75% would like France to negotiate and ratify with the other states concerned the abolition of nuclear weapons. In addition, around 75% want to be consulted by referendum on this vital question.[2]
The referendum bill currently being proposed by some twenty MPs and senators offers the people this chance. [3]
The referendum bill currently being proposed by some twenty MPs and senators offers the people this chance. Parliamentarians and people need to grab this opportunity so that France can open the path to a world freed from the nuclear danger, in its two forms, military and civil. A liveable world, without nuclear weapons or nuclear power-plants.
ACDN
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Contact: Jean-Marie Matagne contact@acdn.net
[1] State of Emergency, « Public Calamities », Nuclear Accidents: A French “Patriot Act” Targeting the Anti-nuclear People
[2] Three French Citizens out of Four want to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
[3] Will France participate in the abolition of nuclear weapons? MPs are proposing a referendum “on shared initiative”
