Nuclear threat of global warming
With record temperatures continuing over much of Europe, concerns grew in France last week over the safety of the country's nuclear power stations, as well as the effects of the heat on agriculture and infrastructure, writes David Tresilian from Paris
As France and much of Europe continued to suffer the combined effects of an exceptional heat wave and a drought, pushing temperatures up to the highest recorded in some parts of France, concerns grew last week over the safety of the country's nuclear power stations, which are not designed to operate in such conditions.
At the Fessenheim nuclear power station on the German border, the authorities have taken the unprecedented step of spraying the concrete exterior of the building housing the reactor with water in an attempt to cool the space within, which has exceeded 48¡C in recent days.
If the temperature inside the reactor building reaches 50¡C, then safety regulations demand that the reactor be shut down.
The reactor itself is cooled by water from the nearby River Rhine, and is operating normally. However, news of last week's operation focussed attention on the capacity of the country's nuclear power stations to continue operating if the heat wave and drought continue, since the river water needed to cool the reactors has reached dangerously low levels.
According to reports last week, nuclear power stations in the Garonne region and in the Rhone Valley have been operating at reduced capacity in recent weeks, due to a rise in the temperature of the cooling water.
Though the French authorities have said that the nuclear power stations in the Loire Valley south of Paris are presently operating normally, if the level of the Loire River, already at low levels, continues to drop, then these installations will have to be shut down.
The concerns over the safety of France's nuclear power stations in the continuing heat wave echoed concerns over the ability of other parts of the country's infrastructure to continue functioning in the heat.
Since June, France, like elsewhere in Europe, has suffered from three successive waves of heat, each bringing temperatures either near the highest ever recorded or breaking previous records. In late June, temperature records were broken in many French cities, and high temperatures again followed in mid July. The present heat wave, predicted to last at least another week, began in early August.
Though France's infrastructure is both better built and better maintained than that in the neighbouring United Kingdom, where roads have been melting and trains affected by buckling train-tracks, soaring pollution and ozone levels in French cities as a result of the continuing heat have meant restrictions being placed on the use of cars.
Ozone levels were above the recommended maximums in many French cities last week, with city authorities in Strasbourg in the east of France declaring public transport to be free in an effort to discourage people from using their cars.
Restrictions on water use have been put in place in 56 départements (administrative regions) and farmers in 55 départements have requested emergency government aid faced with dying crops and livestock. It is estimated that one million chickens have died in recent weeks, suffocated by the heat.
In the south of France, forest fires like those that have ravaged Portugal, Spain and Italy in recent days were being gradually brought under control around the Riviera town of Nice last week, but not before they had damaged the tourist industry and destroyed thousands of hectares of forest.
Already damaged by a strike by actors and performing artists that has led to the cancellation of this year's Avignon Festival, one of the major events on the French arts calendar, tourism in the south of France has been further damaged by the forest fires that have raged around Nice, Montpellier and in the Pyrenees, forcing holiday-makers in some cases to abandon their holiday homes.
Temperatures recorded in much of France last week reached new highs, with historic figures being reached in towns such as Reims (38.7¡C), Troyes (39.5¡C) and Bordeaux (40.2¡C). In Paris, temperatures reached 38¡C at the weekend, the highest since 1949. Rainfall has been down by 70 per cent over much of France, and by 90 per cent in some areas.
Though the government has been reluctant to declare a state of emergency in the face of the unprecedented weather conditions, attention has turned to the role played by global warming in the climate now being experienced in Europe, with forecasters warning that extreme weather conditions may now become the norm across the continent, ending northern Europe's reputation for generally mild winters and temperate summers.
It is thought that worldwide temperatures went up by 0.6¡C over the course of the last century, increasing in France by 1¡C during the same period. Increases in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, mostly produced by the burning of fossil fuels, have accelerated since 1980, with the 10 hottest years worldwide ever recorded all falling after 1987.
According to experts interviewed in the French newspaper Le Monde last week, it is thought that these changes will translate for the time being into an increase in extreme weather conditions, rather than wholesale climatic change.
However, the experts warned, changes in the weather resulting from global warming had already started, and they could not now be reversed, even if all carbon dioxide emissions were to be halted tomorrow.
Attempts at reducing carbon dioxide emissions have so far foundered on the refusal of the United States to follow the European lead in adopting the Kyoto Protocol, agreed in 1997. This would have committed states signatory to the protocol to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to agreed levels, something the United States has refused to do, saying that it would damage the US economy.
