Radioactive scare in Marcoule

At noon on Monday an accident occurred at the nuclear complex of Marcoule in southeastern France, killing one worker and injuring four more, one of them seriously. This complex is not actually a nuclear plant, but rather a former, now disused plant that includes an installation used for the reprocessing of radioactive residues. The cause of the accident was an explosion in one of the furnace where processing work is done on metallic wastes of low or very low radioactivity. According to the available information, there has been no leak of radioactivity to the exterior as a result of the explosion, and the damage is confined to the interior of the complex.

We are looking, then, at an accident of much smaller dimensions than others that have happened in nuclear plants. The accident will apparently have no long-term effects on the nearby territory and its population, such as those that, in the region surrounding the Japanese nuclear plant of Fukushima, are turning out to be so costly and so difficult to combat.

In spite of its apparent inconsequentiality, this accident will surely amplify and intensify the widespread public rejection of nuclear technology which was already aroused by the Fukushima accident.

This public rejection has reversed a trend toward progressive acceptance of nuclear technology as an important element in future energy supplies. The use of "clean" energy sources that are sparing, or have zero impact, in the generation of carbon dioxide, is one aspect of the struggle against climate change.

The Japanese accident has produced a sharp turnaround, which has been manifested in Germany's decision to close some of its nuclear plants in the short term, and all of them in the medium term; in Japan's decision to keep a considerable number of its plants disconnected and inoperative; in the doubts that have arisen in countries such as the United States; and in the evaporation of the Italian plan for construction of new nuclear power stations over the next few years. It is clear enough that the nuclear plants that have already been shut down can be dispensed with, but it is also obvious that the price is a higher rate of emission of greenhouse gases.

The energy sources which will presumably take the place of nuclear plants are not, as yet, those renewable energies, which will need time and investment to attain the required volume. There has, rather, been an increase in the production of electricity deriving from the combustion of coal or natural gas.

In the short term, experience shows that the present setback to nuclear energy, based on the undeniable fact of the proliferation and gravity of the consequences produced by atomic accidents, is going to be accompanied by a setback to the general determination to struggle against the rising level of contaminating emissions being poured into the atmosphere.