Victory: Cogema guilty of illegal nuclear waste

Cogema, a subsidiary of the huge French energy company Areva, has been illegally importing and storing Australian nuclear waste for the last four years. As we tried to tell them way back in 2001, this storage is a source of environmental damage.  Four years of legal wrangling later, Cogema has now been ordered to pay 10,000 Euros in damages to Greenpeace. "10,000 euros?" you might think.  "Surely that's peanuts to Cogema!"  True - but it's the repercussions of this decision that could really make an impact.

Basically, so far the nuclear industry has been able to get away with the very strange idea that spent nuclear fuel does not constitute nuclear waste.  The admission that the nuclear waste involved in this case is now admitted to actually be... well, nuclear waste, means the whole French policy of waste management  is now at stake.

"This is a major victory," explains Yannick Rousselet, our French nuclear campaigner. "This decision confirms what we have always said: Cogema is illegally importing nuclear waste on French soil. This decision applies today to the Australian waste, but many other types of waste are in the same situation, which means the La Hague plant can now truly be called a nuclear dump!"

The Court of appeal also ordered Areva to produce an operating authorisation for the reprocessing of the Australian waste within three months. After this deadline, Cogema will be given two months to remove the waste from France, or pay the unexpected penalty of paying Greenpeace 1500 euros per day.  This decision casts doubt on the fate of all the nuclear waste stored by Areva, and will hopefully pave the way for more responsibility on the part of the nuclear industry.