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AN EXPLOSION AT a nuclear power plant on France’s northwest coast has caused minor injuries today, but the authorities said there was no risk of radiation.
The blast took place in the engine room at the Flamanville plant, which lies 25km west of the port of Cherbourg and just across from the Channel Islands. It lies 440km from the Irish port town of Rosslare.
“It is a technical incident. It is not a nuclear accident,” senior local official Jacques Witkowski told AFP.
He said a ventilator had exploded outside the nuclear zone at the plant, which has been in operation since the 1980s and is operated by state-controlled energy giant EDF.
“It’s all over. The emergency teams are leaving,” Witkowski said.
Five people suffered smoke inhalation but there were no serious injuries, Witkowski said.
One of the two pressurised water reactors at the plant was shut down after the explosion and the incident was declared over at 11.00 Irish time, the authorities said.
The two 1,300 megawatt reactors have been in service since 1985 and 1986, and the site currently employs 810 people, alongside an additional 350 subcontractors.
A new third-generation reactor known as EPR is being built at Flamanville, which will be the world’s largest when it goes into operation in late 2018.
‘Improved safety record’
Construction of the new reactor at the site in Normandy began in 2007 and was initially due for completion in 2012 but has been delayed several times, and its initial budget has more than tripled, to €10.5 billion.
EDF said its safety record at nuclear sites improved last year, with 2.3 accidents for every one million hours worked, compared with 2.6 in 2015.
That translates into five accidents that required reactor shutdowns in 2016, after eight the previous year.
France relies heavily on nuclear power, building its first nuclear plant in 1977 at Fessenheim, a site on the border with Germany that is set to be decommissioned in 2018.
Nuclear reactors generate about 75% of France’s electricity supply, a level the government wants to bring down to 50% by 2025.
Fessenheim, located on a seismic fault line, has worried French, German and Swiss environmentalists for years and its fate has been the subject of dispute with Berlin.
France and Germany are close EU partners but have taken vastly different approaches to power generation.
Germany – where the public mood swung against nuclear power following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster – decided to phase out nuclear power following Japan’s Fukushima meltdown in 2011.
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Is this a wind up ?
On the other hand I’d love to have the money to buy it
Just like and share to be in with a chance to win one.
Not for me.
I couldn’t tell my boss I was late because of my watch.
Don’t see any reason there to pay 1.1m for a watch, save the money and ask someone the time, or if you can pay that type of cash for a watch why the fu*k would you care what time it is
I honestly think a finely made watch is beautiful. I feel naked if I don’t wear one on a night out. I think a watch and ring is the only jewellery a man should wear. I do have a watch fetish but have never spent any more that 500 euro on one. Any more is just silly. But sure if you are loaded why not.
I agree family guy, I wear my watch all the time and feel naked without it.
Does it have a calculator though?
And all it does is tell the time
does it have a sexy voice..??
Ill have 2
One for each wrist?
Oh yeh. I’ll be unbalanced if i don’t
Another upstart of a company.
Established no doubt, to separate new money easterners from their cash.
Well if they’re foolish with their dollars.
Maybe they deserve to be shafted.
Your a boor.
Fact are booring.
My auld Casio will do me. Best 15euro I ever spent.
I’d rather have a Veyron.
But not the cost of running it. They would financially cripple you, which is why the vast majority of those on the market have hardly been driven.
You think the running cost is why the majority of veyrons are not driven in public…?
Skin, no, not the sole reason but almost certainly a contributory factor.
Four sprung durch technik?
Time is your worst enemy, why would you pay 1.1 Million, for a watch, and half the world’s Children starving, it beggers belief.
300 watches = 1 children’s hospital
But you can’t wear the other 299 watches on your arm now can you.
Do the ladies really judge a fella by the piece on his wrist?!
To spend that much on a watch you’d have to have a piece for a head…
It’s not what’s on his wrist that they care about, it’s the distance from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger. So shallow…
I’ve got 200 of these unwrapped which can’t be sold. Like and share to be in with a chance to win one :)
Well it would also have to bring me my tea and toast up to the bed in the morning as well if I paid that price for it!!!!!!
Does it only work when tethered to an iPhone 6?
what is a power reserve function? and how is it powered?
Looks like the strap is extra!
If I could afford this I would care what time it was
Saw a watch that cost $350,000 in a shop the other day. It’s made from authentic pieces salvaged from the Titanic! Some people…
Watch yourself….
have your say