Satellite image of the Le Havre plant

Fig 100.3 Satellite image of the Le Havre plant. (Source Satelhte imagery courtesy of GeoEye. Copyright 2009. All rights reserved. ) 

In short, solidity, the system of dispersion of radionuclides and the passivity of the population drove the beginning of the construction of a factory that was to replace the processing plant in Marcoule, built in 1958, on the south of France. 

With the CEA s atomic factory under constmction, it was called the large building site (Zonabend, 1989 10). There was no consultation with the population or democratic debate. Besides, the project was classified as secret defense until 1971, the date at which the industrial activity came under civilian responsibility.  

Sometimes, the population of the villages effectively doubled in a few years. In the apartment buildings that spatially and socially reorganized the villages, one finds the lowest level of hierarchy of the nuclear industry, while the top of the hierarchy settled in the surrounding towns. This new population is quantitatively numerous and qualitatively at odds with a traditional social equilibrium marked with a high 

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