France News

French nuclear leaks spark concerns from Criirad group

Friday, 25 July 2008

French nuclear leaks spark concerns from Criirad group

Criirad, which is a French nuclear monitoring group, has said they are concerned by the number accidental nuclear spills from power stations in France in a short space of time.

Corinne Castanier, the director of Criirad, explained that the organisation is alarmed by the number of people contaminated by radiation in as many as four different incidents.

Around 100 workers at Tricastin, in southern France, were recently exposed to low doses of radiation and this happened only a fortnight after another leak caused a reactor to be temporarily closed down.

Ms Castanier claimed there has been as much as a 10-fold increase in the number of nuclear accidents reported by staff from the nuclear power industry of France.

Although the recent incident was rated at level zero on a scale of seriousness of nuclear threats, the director of Criirad pointed out that the high number of problems was due to an increased pressure to create energy as quickly as possible, and that this was contributing to a lowering of standards.

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