It is one of the country’s oldest nuclear power plants, Tricastin, in the south of France, just north of Avignon.
An engineer who works there acts as a whistleblower. According to a police report he made last autumn, he tried several times to alert both the energy giant EDF and the Minister of the Environment about incidents.
This includes a large and sudden disturbance at one of the plant’s reactors in 2017, as well as a flood inside the plant the following year. None of the incidents were reported to the supervisory authority from time to time. It is also about toxic emissions in nature and attempts to prevent inspectors from getting there.
The suspected crimes took place between 2017 and 2021, the newspaper writes Le Monde.
A legal source in Marseille tells AFP that the nuclear power plant’s management is being investigated for fraud and for having “put people’s lives in danger”.
Nuclear power currently accounts for about 70 percent of France’s electricity supply. President Emmanuel Macron has announced that another 14 nuclear power plants will be built with the stated aim of speeding up the transition from fossil fuels.