Wampum

Stéphane Lhomme has been arrested. He's the spokesperson for Sortir du nucléaire, a network of 718 anti-nuclear organizations, and his arrest was carried out by the Direction de la surveillance du territoire (DST), "sous le contrôle de la section antiterroriste du parquet de Paris".

EDF is proposing to build a new type of pressurised reactor near Cherbourg. It is designed to fail if struck by a large airplane. This engineering cost/benefit design choice is documented. The document is classified "confidential defense", and its existance and contents are well-known. Never the less, the claim of suspicion of its possession is suffieicient to cause the national courts to issue warrents for an arrest and the search and seizure of the archives of the person arrested.

As a "terrorist".

The "European Pressurized Reactor", a 3rd generation pressurized water reactor with a cute name, will cost 3 billion Euros, and according to EDF, that money would not be better spent on improving energy efficiency and developing renewables, and all 58 reactors in France share the design choice that the Avrea group ("CO2 free power") has selected for is "EPR" design, which it is building in Finland, and has bid in China, and will market the US.

What EDF is really afraid of is that the French state won't be irrevocably committed to, won't have suspended or "compressed" the review process for, a Gen3 reactor, before Chirac, de Villepin, and Sarkozy and the French Right are voted out of power in 2007.

Here's the non-classified cover letter (pdf) to the classified original, which is chock-a-block with plane+nuke=ouch references.