Clash At Super Ph

Environmentalists lost a battle but still expect to win the war

They shall not pass," declared Prefect Rene Jannin of the department of Isere, invoking the immortal words of Marshal Petain before the 1916 Battle of Verdun. This time, however, the attacking army was not only German but also Swiss, Belgian, Italian, Spanish, British and mostly French--perhaps 30,000 demonstrators in all. They were protesting against "Super Phenix," France's giant Plutonium breeder reactor, under construction near Malville, 28 miles east of Lyon.

The weapons on both sides were less than nuclear--concussion grenades, Molotov cocktails, tear gas, clubs and stones --but they inflicted some cruel injuries. One demonstrator, a 31-year-old chemistry teacher, died when a concussion grenade ruptured his lungs and caused internal hemorrhaging. At least 100 demonstrators and ten police were hurt, including some on both sides who lost hands or feet when concussion grenades exploded prematurely. The environmentalists, neatly bottled up on a narrow road, never had a chance to reach the nuclear site a mile from the battlefield, and their cause ended up as another casualty in the confusion. "What does beating up flics have to do with nuclear energy?" asked one disgusted demonstrator huddling in the chill rain. Scolded the newspaper Quotidien de Paris: "The notion of defense of the environment implies nonviolence."

Still, the French government suffered too, since the spectacle of demonstrators and flics fighting in the rain flashed across the newspaper pages and television screens of Europe and the rest of the world. That was what many of the environmentalists had hoped for, a massive coup de theatre that would turn public opinion against the far-ranging French nuclear-energy program.

"Nuclear energy is at the crossroads of the two independences of France: the independence of her defense and the independence of her energy supply." So said President Valery Giscard d'Estaing while visiting Pierrelatte, the French Los Alamos, just before last week's battle. France has no oil and very little coal, and the 1973 Arab oil boycott dramatically demonstrated French reliance on foreign energy. Since 1974, as a result, the government has organized an ambitious atomic-energy program to provide at least 40 conventional nuclear-power plants and a 1,200-megawatt fast-neutron plant that will breed plutonium fuel from uranium wastes, reducing any necessity for importing North American uranium. Scientists are sharply divided over the dangers that may be inherent in the breeder reactors, and President Carter has halted the U.S. breeder program as risky. The French are nonetheless pressing ahead with their breeder plan, the most ambitious undertaken by any nation, and France's nuclear network is expected to free the country from 75% of its imported-energy requirements by 1985.

Environmentalists all over Europe have become increasingly opposed to such plans. What worries them in particular is that Super Peenix will produce energy from a sophisticated sodium-cooled reactor eight times more powerful than smaller, water-cooled plants. The environmentalists protest that there have not been adequate tests of the highly volatile sodium system, which involves temperatures up to 1,000DEGF.

Last March the environmentalists took the nuclear issue to the polls in France's municipal elections and scored surprising success. They gained 10% of the vote and were the critical factor in some elections, notably in "atomic communes" close to existing or proposed power plants. The environmentalists hope to do still better in next year's elections, particularly if they continue to receive the kind of publicity they have gained so far. So although it was the mayhem and not the message at Malville last week, France can expect quite a few more such demonstrations between now and voting time next March.

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