Earth Equity News

New Generation of European Nuclear Power Plants Could be More Dangerous. By Geoffrey Lean, London Independent, February 8, 2009. "New nuclear reactors planned for Britain will produce many times more radiation than previous reactors that could be rapidly released in an accident... The revelations -- based on information buried deep in documents produced by the nuclear industry itself -- calls into doubt repeated assertions that the new European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs) will be safer than the old atomic power stations they replace... The EPR is the most advanced of the new generation of nuclear reactors. One is already being built in Finland and one in Normandy, France. And last week President Nicolas Sarkozy announced plans to build another in Normandy, while India signed a draft accord to buy between two and six of them. The French company EDF has said that it plans to build four in Britain... Data in one report, produced by EDF, suggests that they would produce four times as much radioactive bromine, rubidium, iodine and caesium as a present-day reactor. Information in another -- by Posiva Oy, a nuclear waste company owned by two Finnish reactor builders -- indicates that seven times as much iodine 129 is produced. And material in a third, by the Swiss National Cooperative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste, implies that they will give rise to 11 times as much caesium 135 and 137. This happens because the reactors are designed to burn their nuclear fuel almost twice as thoroughly as normal ones. Independent nuclear consultant, John Large, says that this 'changes the physical characteristics of the fuel' and increases the immediate danger if the radiation should escape."