"The situation has become very worrying." This was stated to the newspaper Le Figaro by Pierre-Franck Chevet, president of the French Nuclear Safety Authority (Asn), referring to the state of most of the country's nuclear power plants. Many systems date back to the XNUMXs and require increasingly expensive maintenance. Security, therefore, is less and less guaranteed.
The crisis began last April, when an excess of carbon was discovered in the steel of a reactor tank under construction in Normandy. "We've had several more nasty surprises since then," Chevet added.
The Authority has ordered EDF, the group that manages the nuclear park on behalf of the State, to shut down 12 reactors to allow for checks. This measure could have consequences for electricity bills in France and possibly also in Italy. The Authority should decide whether or not to restart the 12 reactors not before January.
The number one of the Asn has also revealed that his inspectors have discovered the existence of "unacceptable practices" since the beginning of the sixties in the Creusot factory in Areva, i.e. the existence of 400 dossiers on a series of anomalies which been hidden from the customer and from the Asn.
