When the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl’s nuclear disaster drifted across the European continent in 1986, the French government famously claimed the clouds had stopped at the border.
This time round, as Japanese authorities struggle to bring the crippled Fukushima plant north-east of Tokyo back under control, the French public is not buying any such platitudes. A vast public debate has been sparked by the accident, calling into question for the first time in decades France’s heavy reliance on nuclear power.
The unease has been so intense that even the long-standing cross-party consensus on nuclear power seems to be crumbling. The Socialist party this week ditched decades of atomic allegiance to call for an exit within 20-30 years.