The French Cling to the Nuclear Dream

PARIS, France-French nuclear physicists have always been pioneers in their field. Nobel Prize-winner Henri Becquerel first discovered radiation in 1986, and the Curie name is at least as intimately related to a century of developments in nuclear technology as Einstein and Oppenheimer.

France's enthusiasm for nuclear power has also shaped its controversial nuclear program. France is the only Western nation to have joined with China in holding out against the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. And despite international criticism, France pressed ahead with nuclear trade arrangements with South Africa and South Korea.

France is unique not only in the extent to which the government has committed itself to a nuclear course, but in the degree to which the French public seems to have accepted the risks of nuclear power. According to a poll released in January by the Swedish Institute for Opinion Research, fully 64 percent of the French population supports nuclear energy, and only 27 percent oppose it. A mere 9 percent were without opinion. In other European countries, as in Japan, Britain and the United States, the numbers were far more evenly split.

The recent accident at the Chernobyl reactor in the Ukraine is forcing many European governments to reevaluate their nuclear programs. France, however, is not yet among them.

Bertrand de Gallassus, a spokesman for the Atomic Energy Commission, the French conglomerate that has a controlling hand in every aspect of the nuclear energy production process, said the disaster at Chernobyl will not diminish the government's commitment to its nuclear program.

"The accident in Russia occurred in a very specific type of reactor, a type we do not have here in France," he maintained, adding that Chernobyl "won't have any effect on the public's acceptance of nuclear power in France."

Although it is still too early to tell precisely how much effect the Chernobyl disaster will have on European public opinion, de Gallasus is confident that the country will remain committed to nuclear power.

In Scandanavia and other areas of Western Europe that suffered radioactive fallout, the ranks of antinuclear groups are growing. In France, however, the opposition faces greater obstacles.

Unlike West Germany, where an active anti-nuclear movement has found a political voice in the progressive Green Party, or in the United States, where opponents of nuclear power have been active for years, the French anti-nuclear movement is constrained both by the lack of opportunity for public debate and by government suppression of data.

The Mitterand administration was slow to publicize the explosion at Chernobyl and initially refused to reveal radiation levels or potential health hazards to the public.

"It took a number of days for the government to say anything [about the radiation released at Chernobyl]", said Louise Trussell of the Paris office of Greenpeace. "The nuclear establishment sees [Chernobyl] as a danger to its image," she said. So "there are enormous efforts being made to reassure people, even though no one is coming out with straight facts. The information is still inadequate."

Even when the government began reporting on the magnitude of the radiation release at Chernobyl, the levels on the French side of the border between West Germany and France claimed to be four times lower ' than those recorded on the German side.

The lack of credible information from the French government made it particularly difficult for the opposition to organize around the Soviet disaster. "We don't even have the figures to analyze the situation," said Trussell.

Although Chernobyl "will make people in France more skeptical of nuclear power," Trussell believes, it may be a long time before popular opposition is strong enough to reverse the government's longstanding commitment to nuclear power. "Since the man in the street doesn't get a say" in France's energy policy, she said, critics often feel like "they're banging their heads against the wall and lose steam."

To Jean Pierre Olivier, director of the waste management division of the Paris-based Nuclear Energy Agency, an affiliate of the 23-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], the current lack of citizen opposition is a sign of confidence and support.

"People realize that nuclear energy is a must for France," he said. "We have few natural energy resources in France, no oil, no coal, and so we need to rely on something."

In 1973, when the Arab oil embargo struck hard at the western oil-dependent economies, France relied on foreign energy sources for 75 percent of its energy needs. By 1990, de Galassus predicted, France will be more than 50 percent energy independent.

In 1985, nuclear power generated two-thirds of all electricity produced in France, over 200 billion kilowatt hours. The government expects that as much as 80 percent of all electricity produced in France by the end of this century will be nuclear-generated. In the United States, by comparison, nuclear energy fulfills less than 20 percent of total electricity needs, although this comes to more than 400 billion kilowatt hours.

France has begun exporting electricity to neighboring countries. Exports to Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain and Belgium totalled nearly $1 billion in 1985 alone.

As long as the French program continues to function unscathed by safety breeches on the scale of Chernobyl or Three Mile Island, said Trussell, the government will be able to press on with its program.

The election of Socialist Party Candidate Francois Mitterrand in 1981 threw the budding opposition into disarray. During his campaign Mitterand received widespread support from environmentalists because he promised to substitute coal and natural gas for oil and nuclear power. Immediately after taking office, Mitterrand stopped construction on five plants and slashed the number of approved plants for 1982 from nine to six. But he soon reneged on his campaign promise to dismantle the country's nuclear industry.

"The Socialist Party promised to take a democratic approach to energy, and to listen to the opponents of nuclear energy," said a spokesman for Friends of the Earth in Paris. Instead, "it followed the program of the Right."

Long before Mitterand, however, opponents to France's nuclear program had found it difficult to influence government energy policy.

"The French system isn't congenial to citizen participation," said Dr. Irving Bupp, with Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy consulting group. "In the end it is a very authoritarian system. The government has total control over information. There's no opportunity for intervention in the licensing process."

French nuclear industry officials maintain that opposition is limited because safety precautions are highly developed. They point out that extensive state subsidies to the industry have produced unparalleled standardization and safety in reactor types. Thirty-two of France's 44 operational reactors are pressurized water reactors, manufactured according to a uniform design.

However, four of France's operating reactors use a cooling system similar to Chernobyl. Although French officials say their model is safer than the Russian version, they plan to evaluate all of these plants based on the data that comes out of the Chernobyl investigation.

But while the potential health and safety risks of nuclear power have not halted France's ambitious nuclear program, other factors have slowed its pace.

A decline in energy consumption since 1982, for example, has forced industry planners to scale down new construction from six reactors per year-the average between 1974 and 1982-to under two per year.

"Even Electricite de France [the national electric company] in 1980 said there were four reactors too many," said a Friends of the Earth spokesman in Paris. Other estimates put the number of excess plants at 15.

And despite the lead France has in fast-breeder technology, industry officials predict it will be at least two decades before these reactors contribute significantly to France's energy needs.

In addition, the world recession has placed nuclear energy technology out of financial reach for many developing nations, a prospect that has overzealous French manufacturers in a surplus frenzy.

Aaron Freiwald is a freelance writer based in Paris, France.