France Frets Over Nuke Plants and Heatwave Toll
Date: 12-Aug-03
Country: FRANCE
Author: Brian Love
After Paris sweltered through its hottest night since records began, a doctor in the city said more elderly people were dying from the heat and accused health authorities doing little about the crisis.
Temperatures have hit around 104 degrees Fahrenheit in the past few days, spelling trouble for France's nuclear reactors, many of which are cooled by river water. The plants pour water back into the rivers but only once it has been cooled to a certain temperature to protect the environment.
With river levels falling and the mercury rising, authorities face the choice of spewing out hotter water, risking ecological damage, or cutting output, potentially leading to blackouts.
About 80 percent of France's electricity needs are met by 19 nuclear power stations and 58 reactors.
Industry Minister Nicole Fontaine chaired talks with officials of several ministries, the state-owned power utility Electricite de France and the power distribution grid operator RTE.
"The situation is very serious," she said ahead of the meeting.
"There's no more margin for maneuver, it's essential that citizens are ready to accept the consequences," Fontaine said.
It was not clear which option she was preparing people for.
Yves Contassot, spokesman for the environmental Greens party, accused Fontaine of playing the merchant of doom to prepare public opinion for a decision that would maintain output at the expense of the environment. "It's frightening," he said.
The Bugey power station near Lyon on the Rhone river has already requested a special exemption to pour hotter water back into the river.
Other countries face similar dilemmas. Germany has cut power output while Italy is trying to avoid further blackouts.
HEATWAVE HITS HOSPITALS
The heatwave has also sparked fires in many parts of Europe and claimed dozens of lives.
Sounding the alarm over the fate of elderly people, the head of an association of emergency ward doctors said as many as 50 people had died in Paris and the surrounding area in the past few days because of the heat.
"We've never seen people arriving sick in cartloads like this, frequently with fevers of 42 or 43.5 degrees (107.6 to 110.3 Fahrenheit," Patrick Pelloux told France Info radio.
"I totally reject the fatalistic view of the national health authority that these are deaths from natural causes. So be it, but what are we supposed to do, sit and watch people fade away? That's intolerable, something has to be done."
Newspapers reported a leap in death rates at care homes for the elderly with funeral parlors saying they had no more room to take bodies into storage. With temperatures of 77.9 degrees Fahrenheit, Paris had its warmest night Sunday since records began 130 years ago, the Meteo France weather agency said.
Carpets of leaves from trees withering in the heat gave the streets of Paris and other towns an autumn-like appearance.
While Paris and northern France could expect cooler weather later in the week, temperatures were expected to stay close to 38 degrees Monday and hit around 42 degrees in other parts of the country, a Meteo France spokesman said.