A worker was killed Monday in an explosion at a French nuclear-waste site, but officials said there was no radioactive leak and authorities quickly declared the emergency over.
Four people were injured, one with serious burns, in the blast at the Centraco site, owned by French power utility EDF and adjacent to the Marcoule nuclear research center on the Rhone river near the southern city of Orange.
The area no longer houses nuclear reactors, but in the wake of this year’s Fukushima disaster in Japan, the incident is likely to provide further arguments for opponents of France’s heavy reliance on nuclear energy.
EDF, which a regulator said had improved safety at the site since being criticized in 2008, said the blast was contained within a furnace that was used to melt scrap metal from nuclear plants, a process that emitted only low levels of radiation.
An EDF spokeswoman said the company could not immediately determine the cause of the explosion.
An executive from the plant operator, EDF subsidiary Socodei, called the incident a “classic industrial accident” that would most likely be classified as Level 1 on the seven-point international scale of nuclear incidents.
France’s ASN nuclear safety watchdog declared the incident over but has launched an inquiry. The International Atomic Energy Agency was seeking information from France and activated its incident and emergency center.
Officials said they could not recall any previous fatal accidents at French nuclear plants.
Employing some 350 people, the plant melts down scrap metal such as valves and pumps used in nuclear facilities and burns combustible waste in an incinerator, according to Centraco’s Web site.
France draws 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear plants. It is carrying out stress tests on its 58 reactors in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, when the nuclear site was damaged by an earthquake and tsunami.
Kash Burchett, European energy analyst at IHS Energy, noted that a poll in June had found 77 percent of French voters opposed to building new nuclear plants. But she said trade unions, as well as businesses facing higher fuel costs, would be unlikely to accept any move by a future government to curb investment in nuclear power.
Malcolm Sperrin, director of medical physics and clinical engineering at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, England, said: “It is unlikely that there will be significant, or any, releases of radiation into the wider environment, but this will need to be confirmed in the next few hours or days.”
— Reuters
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