AFP-MAIL : Thousands demonstrate in France against nuclear power

PARIS, Oct 20 (AFP) - Thousands demonstrated in
France Saturday for a change in the country's energy
policy to eliminate nuclear power and end nuclear
waste reprocessing. In Lyon, Dominique Voynet,
secretary general of the French Greens
environmentalist party and a former environment
minister, stressed it was both "possible and
necessary" to stop nuclear recycling in France. At
Colmar in the east of the country, some 2,000
demonstrated against the 20-year-old nuclear power
station at Fessenheim. One banner read: "20 years of
radioactive waste and risk of accidents is quite
enough." Demonstrators from Switzerland and Germany
joined the protest against the power station
situated in a border area close to both of those
countries. Some 8,000 demonstrators rallied in the
western city of Nantes under the motto: "Let's quit
the nuclear age." Members of the environmentalist
organisation Greenpeace, the French Greens and the
local Breton independence movement UDB took part in
the demonstration. On Friday, France deployed
air-defence systems around a nuclear installation,
indicating its readiness to shoot down hijacked
passenger aircraft such as the ones used in the
September 11 attacks in the United States. Radar
from a ground-to-air missile battery were installed
near the La Hague nuclear waste reprocessing plant
in Normandy in order to "enhance air surveillance at
low altitude", a defence ministry spokesman said.
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