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Publicatie Laka-bibliotheek:
La Hague Particularly Exposed to Plane Crash Risk

AuteurWISE Paris
Datumseptember 2001
Classificatie 2.02.8.10/15 (FRANKRIJK - LA HAGUE - ALGEMEEN)
Voorkant

Uit de publicatie:

LA Hague Particularly Exposed to Plane Crash Risk

1. Summary

The 11 September 2001 attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon 
also hit the classical risk assessment procedures. In the case of nuclear facilities, 
it clearly appears that the international approach, summed up in France in two 
Fundamental Safety Regulations (Règles Fondamentales de Sûreté- RFS) applicable 
to reactors and other facilities, is now out-of-date: it is based on a probabilistic 
reasoning according to which a very serious risk but very improbable is admitted 
as «acceptable».

For the design of nuclear facilities, this vision resulted in considering only the risk 
of an accidental crash of small-sized aircraft, several hundred times less significant 
as far as impact is concerned, and containing only a fraction of the amount of 
kerosene (or jet fuel) the airliners «Used» by the terrorists in the United States.

In spite of the reassuring tone adopted by the French authorities- contradicted by 
safety experts in France as well as by specialists of the International Atomic Energy 
Agency (IAEA) - the risk is that of a major accident: besides the fact that nuclear 
reactors are not conceived to resist a crash of such a scope, building experts agree to 
say that no construction made either of steel or concrete is guaranteed against the 
impact of a heavy airplane loaded with fuel. In the case of the containment wall of a 
nuclear reactor, this could lead to a scenario of releasing radioactivity comparable to 
that of the Chernobyl accident.

But the greatest danger comes undoubtedly from the La Hague reprocessing facilities, 
which concentrate a stock of radioactive substances that largely exceeds those of all 
the French nuclear reactors put together. WISE-Paris estimated that a serious accident 
scenario in only one of the irradiated fuel cooling pools at La Hague could lead to 
the release of radioactive cesium up to over 60 times the amount release during the
Chernobyl accident.

A voluntary crash of an airliner on La Hague, a hypothesis still judged « improbable » 
by COGEMA, but which today has become « plausible », could result in such a 
scenario. Neither the reactors, nor the La Hague facilities are designed to resist such 
an impact. The crash of a big plane on La Hague could severely damage or destroy, 
besides the spent fuel pools, other parts of the plant such as the storage of high 
active wastes and the store of more than 55 tons of plutonium, the consequences 
of which would be impossible to price.

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