French Government's Deception on Deadly Tricastin Spill

Paolo Scampa, a physicist and President of the International Association for Protection Against Ionizing Radiation, condemned the deceptive French response in the strongest possible terms. AIPRI was established in 1964. Workers at the Tricastin plant were evacuated after contamination July 27.

The chain reaction of events is a public relations and radiological disaster for AREVA, owner of the plant. AREVA is partially owned by the French government.

The international reaction was swift. The British are questioning the upcoming sale of the British nuclear industry to France's AREVA and the Americans are uneasy about construction of a huge double new nuclear reactor at Calvert Cliffs near Washington, DC.

Nuclear reactors make nuclear bomb grade plutonium, about 500 lbs a year, and they heat water to make steam.

"There is no imminent danger." Another stunning denial of reality that the media helped craft, to conceal everlasting devastation. The AIPRI can only salute your valiant efforts to keep the world ignorant of the incontrovertible scientific fact that radioactivity persists for billions of years.

It is commendable to deceive the public into believing that radioactivity is somehow diminished when it is diluted in water to infinitesimal, insoluble particles. In fact, dilution exponentially multiplies the opportunities for internal contamination of all life forms, and spreads cancer in its wake.

It is essential that the public ignore tens of millions of people, starting with children, now at risk for hundreds of millennia. You do well to lie. What must ordinary people do protect themselves when faced with a superpower so supremely bent on self-interest that it voluntarily contaminates itself ?