All French nuclear plants cleared in post-Fukushima stress tests

Jan 3, 2012, 11:53 GMT

Paris - France's nuclear safety authority on Tuesday gave the green light for all the country's nuclear plants to remain in operation, including a controversial 34-year-plant on the border with Germany.

Publishing the findings of stress tests carried out in the wake of Japan's post-tsunami Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011, the authority said the nuclear plants presented 'a sufficient level of safety so it (the ASN) requested the immediate closure of none of them.'

At the same time, the authority said their continued operation required that 'their robustness, faced with extreme situations, be increased beyond current safety margins as soon as possible.'

The plants' operators had six months to present a list of measures they would take in the event of a catastrophe.

France has the second-largest atomic energy park in the world, after the United States, with 58 reactors providing 75 per cent of the country's electricity.

While other European countries such as German, Italy and Switzerland have backed away or pulled out of nuclear power following the Fukushima disaster, President Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to plough ahead with the country's nuclear programme.

The ASN's endorsement of all France's reactors comes as a blow to critics of the Fessenheim plant in the eastern Alsace region.

French and German anti-nuclear campaigners say the ageing plant, which lies four kilometres from the German border, in an area of moderate seismicity, is a threat to populations on both sides of the Rhine river.

Nearly 100,000 people live within 20 kilometres of Fessenheim's two 900-megawatt reactors.

Critics of Fessenheim say the concrete floor in the No 1 reactor is too thin, and could burst in the event of a nuclear meltdown.

The ASN has recommended that the floor be thickened.