PARIS - France has quietly imposed a ban on information about its controversial shipments of nuclear material, declaring that such details are tantamount to military secrets and disclosure of them is punishable by a jail term.
The move has outraged the country's powerful ecology movement, as it coincides witha push by the Government to not only maintain France's big dependence on nuclear power - a tendency that runs counter to trends elsewhere in Europe - but extend it for decades to come.
The information blackout was requested by Cogema, a state agency which reprocesses nuclear fuel for France's 58 reactors, has a lucrative contract to do the same for clients in Switzerland and Germany and is scouting for customers in Japan.
It asked the Government to classify details about the transport route and timing of these shipments and about training exercises to protect these convoys as being equivalent to "secrets of national defence".
The decree - published without fanfare in the Official Journal on August 9, in the heart of the summer vacation - ostensibly aims at preventing terrorists from using the information to hijack the shipments and get material to make nuclear bombs.
It came after Greenpeace repeatedly published details of shipment itineraries on its website to encourage "citizen inspections" about safety. On February 19, its supporters blocked a truck carrying 150kg of powdered plutonium, enough for several nuclear bombs, in the centre of Chalon-sur-Saone. The truck was en route from Cogema's reprocessing plant at La Hague, on the Normandy coast, to a plutonium fuel production plant at Marcoule, in Provence, in the far south of the country.
France derives about three-quarters of its electricity needs from nuclear power, the highest proportion of any country in the world. The present generation of reactors is heading towards the end of its life and a public debate is supposed to unfold over the next six months about what should be done to replace them.
But remarks last week by Junior Industry Minister Nicole Fontaine are clearly priming the public to accept the building of the next generation of reactors.
