Troubled French nuclear firm comes under fire from U.S. safety advocates

More news today about AREVA, the French state-owned nuclear company whose experimental mixed-oxide fuel assembly had to be removed from Duke Energy's Catawba plant in South Carolina after experiencing potentially hazardous physical changes. Beyond Nuclear, a watchdog organization headquartered in Maryland, has joined with French environmentalists in demanding closure of Socatri, AREVA's troubled nuclear waste facility in Provence, after it contaminated local rivers and groundwater supplies with radiation.

"There has been a cascade of nuclear accidents in France over the last two months," said Beyond Nuclear spokesperson Linda Gunter. "The fact that in both incidents at the Socatri plant there was a delay before the public was informed, raises some serious questions about the corporate behavior of Areva, a company that has multiple nuclear contracts in the U.S."

Yesterday brought yet another potentially hazardous incident at Socatri: an "anomaly" during receipt of a shipment from the French radioactive waste management agency. Though AREVA said the incident did not threaten public health or the environment, it caused the facility to exceed a yearly emissions limit for a radioactive substance. The company reported:

Socatri recently received a shipment whose contents were apparently not what was announced by one of the producers. The difference went undetected during reception of the shipment. The operators were unable to take appropriate measures, and the release of carbon 14 was higher than expected. As a result, Socatri’s authorized annual limit was slightly exceeded.

The sender was Agence Nationale pour la gestion des Déchets Radioactifs, or Andra, which typically ships waste from hospitals and research labs. Socatri workers then sort and send the waste either to a storage facility or an incinerator. The French union Confederation Generale du Travail has said Socatri's growing use of subcontractors coupled with maintenance cutbacks were putting workers and the public at risk.

AREVA is involved in a growing number of ventures in the United States. As part of Shaw AREVA MOX Services, it recently signed a controversial agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy to build a MOX fuel fabrication facility at the Savannah River nuclear site in Aiken, S.C. And number of U.S. companies have plans to build new AREVA-designed Evolutionary Power Reactors at undeveloped sites in Texas and Idaho and at existing nuclear facilities in Missouri, Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania -- though construction of EPRs in France and Finland has been delayed by technical and quality-control problems.

For more on AREVA's recent accidents in France, check out James Ridgeway's "4.5 Billion Years in Provence" over at Mother Jones.

Labels: AREVA, Beyond Nuclear, Duke Energy, EPR, MOX, NRC, nuclear power, nuclear safety, nuclear waste, plutonium, savannah river site, Shaw Group