22, February 2020
France begins shutting down oldest nuclear plant 0
French state-owned energy giant EDF on Saturday began shutting down the country’s oldest nuclear power plant after 43 years in operation.
EDF said it had disconnected one of two reactors at Fessenheim, along the Rhine near France’s eastern border with Germany and Switzerland, at 2:00 am (0100 GMT) in the first stage of the complete closure of the plant.
The second reactor is to be taken off line on June 30 but it will be several months before the two have cooled enough and the used fuel can start to be removed.
The removal of the fuel is expected to be completed by the summer of 2023 but the plant will only be fully decommissioned by 2040 at the earliest.
Shutting down Fessenheim became a key goal of anti-nuclear campaigners after the catastrophic meltdown at Fukushima in Japan in 2011.
Experts have noted that construction and safety standards at Fessenheim, brought online in 1977, fall far short of those at Fukushima, with some warning that seismic and flooding risks in the Alsace region had been underestimated.
Despite a pledge by ex-president Francois Hollande just months after Fukushima to close the plant, it was not until 2018 that President Emmanuel Macron’s government gave the final green light.
“This marks a first step in France’s energy strategy to gradually re-balance nuclear and renewable electricity sources, while cutting carbon emissions by closing coal-fired plants by 2022,” Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said earlier this week.
France will still be left with 56 pressurised water reactors at 18 nuclear power plants — only the United States has more reactors, at 98 — generating an unmatched 70 percent of its electricity needs.
The government confirmed in January that it aims to shut down 12 more reactors nearing or exceeding their original 40-year age limit by 2035, when nuclear power should represent just 50 percent of France’s energy mix.
But at the same time, EDF is racing to get its first next-generation reactor running at its Flamanville plant in 2022 — 10 years behind schedule — and more may be in the pipeline.
Source: AFP
29, February 2020
Thousands rally in France for exiled Catalan leader Puigdemont 0
Tens of thousands of Catalan independence supporters gathered in Perpignan, southern France, on Saturday at a rally in support of exiled former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, who called on the crowd to prepare for the “definitive struggle” for independence.
At around 30km from the Spanish border, it is the closest Puigdemont has been to Spain since he fled the country in October 2017 after calling a referendum on independence.
The referendum, which was declared illegal by Spanish courts, led to a short-lived declaration of independence by leaders in the restive northeastern region, plunging Spain into its biggest political crisis in decades.
Puigdemont, who is now a member of the European Parliament and lives in exile in Belgium, urged supporters waving Catalan flags not to give up on the fight for an independent Catalonia.
“We know that we won’t stop and they won’t stop us. We don’t have to wait for better times because they are here,” he said, to cheers from the crowd, which numbered around 70,000 according to local police, though organizers put the number closer to 150,000.
“Today we have stepped on Catalan soil as free people,” he said.
Perpignan, where Catalan is spoken, is a symbolic location for many Catalans, who call the region Northern Catalonia.
Supporters poured into the city, many crossing the border from Spain.
“Movements like this, with this magnitude, are always a positive thing,” said entrepreneur Joan Candoll, 50. “I see this as an act of unity, not a political campaign”.
Puigdemont made no mention of talks on the Catalan political crisis, which began this week between Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Catalan regional President Quim Torra, who was due to attend the Perpignan rally.
Puigdemont has been unable to return to Spain, where he is wanted on charges of sedition and misuse of public funds for his role in the failed independence bid. All extradition attempts by Spain have so-far failed, and he cannot be detained in France because of his MEP immunity.
By Haggai Fung Achuo