Safe Record of Their 44 Power Plants Is Cited : French Unworried Despite Nuclear Dependence

France is more dependent on nuclear energy than any other country in the world, yet news of the Soviet nuclear accident does not seem to have frightened the French into worrying about their nation’s 44 nuclear power plants.

France’s most popular television news show interviewed residents of a community in the shadow of one of those plants Wednesday night and could not find one to voice any concern about what might happen there. Several laughed in derision at the questions of concern.

The mood seems to come out of French pride in the country’s status as a nuclear power. French leaders often describe France as having the third most powerful nuclear arsenal in the world.

That seems to go hand in hand with its status, after the United States and the Soviet Union, as the third largest user of non-military nuclear energy--and the highest in the percent of its energy dependent on nuclear power.

Fivefold Increase

This status has come quickly. In 15 years, the number of nuclear plants has increased fivefold. The amount of energy produced has gone up 18 times. In 1984, the French plants produced more than 33,000 megawatts, more than 60% of the country’s electrical power.

Under present programs, the government intends to increase the number of nuclear plants to 57 by 1990, producing more than 75% of the country’s electricity.

In the early years of the French nuclear program, there was opposition and demonstrations. But these dissipated with the relatively safe record of the French plants and the general mood of pride in nuclear power.

France’s environmental, disarmament and pacifist movements are small, and there is no indication as yet that they are receiving much of a boost from the Soviet accident.

Assurances of Safety

The accident has received a huge amount of coverage by the French press. But in this coverage, very little space has been devoted to the French program--except for brief assurances that a similar accident could not happen in France.

In fact, the French nuclear safety record has been almost accident-free. There was only one case, in 1965 at a plant known as Chinoon 1, in which a worker received an accidental dose of radiation. On two other occasions, accidents caused the shutdown of the plant at Sena-Chooz for two months in 1968 and at Marcoule for 15 months beginning in 1976. But in both cases, officials said there was no radiation leak.

Premier Jacques Chirac has been quoted as saying that he has offered French help in dealing with the Soviet nuclear disaster at Chernobyl.

The American accident at the Three Mile Island plant near Harrisburg, Pa., in 1979 caused some consternation. But French officials insisted that, although their plants were built on license from Westinghouse, they were different enough to be safer. Public opinion polls indicated that most French accepted this thesis.

Program Started Slowly

The French nuclear power system got off to a slow start because the late President Charles de Gaulle did not want to rely on American technology. But his successor, the late President Georges Pompidou, decided in 1969 that France could not develop nuclear power on its own. He approved the purchase of the right to use the American Westinghouse system of light water and enriched uranium.

After the oil crisis of 1973, President Valery Giscard d’Estaing was in a position to capitalize on the Pompidou decision and accelerate French use of nuclear energy. He was helped by French development of a new, fast-speed breeder reactor and the fact that France has large uranium deposits. The breeder uses waste plutonium from the regular uranium, light-water reactor to create nuclear energy.

The nuclear industry grew so quickly in France that the government agency that oversees nuclear energy is now an exporter of nuclear technology.

Early Demonstrations

Giscard d’Estaing did face demonstrations from environmentalists, especially at the site of the Superphenix plutonium reactor near Lyon in 1977 and at a proposed plant in Brittany in 1980.

One demonstrator was killed in the clash at Lyon, but Giscard d’Estaing, citing public opinion polls that supported nuclear power by a wide margin, refused to give in to the environmentalists.

President Francois Mitterrand and his Socialist Party came to power in 1981 with a platform that attempted to win environmental support by promising a slowdown in the nuclear energy program.

Once in power, the Socialists did suspend construction of the Brittany plant. But they disappointed the environmentalists by making few other reductions in the overall nuclear program.

Socialist Response

In a few years, in fact, the Socialists had committed themselves to supporting the previously authorized expansion in nuclear energy--though at a somewhat slower pace. The Socialist slowdown, however, was not a result of environmental ideology but of a fear that the program might produce more energy than necessary.

There is much concern among French officials now that the country may have too much nuclear energy in the 1990s. This has been a special worry lately with the precipitous drop in the price of oil.