Ghislaine Buffard

At a time when Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland have decided to move away from atomic energy and focus on renewable energy, France - the most nuclear-powered country in the world, with 70% of its electricity produced by its reactors - is planning to invest in new EPRs. Is this choice really compatible with the ecological transition? Although nuclear power plants do not emit CO2, their dismantling at the end of their life generates pollution of another kind: exponential quantities of contaminated waste, the reuse of which remains hypothetical and the storage of which is highly problematic. Not to mention the risk of disaster, as at Chernobyl or Fukushima.

TOXIC WASTE: A TIME BOMB UNDER OUR FEET explores the recent push for underground storage of some of the world’s most dangerous industrial poisons. Cyanide, arsenic, mercury, nuclear waste — we are repeatedly told that the facilities housing these materials are safe. But are they? Director Ghislaine Buffard argues that not only are these projects a potential environmental nightmare, they also undermine local democracy, as communities get little say when powerful corporations and governments are determined to build these subterranean megaprojects. TOXIC WASTE: A TIME BOMB UNDER OUR FEET raises the question: Isn’t it better to reduce waste instead of finding increasingly complex, potentially dangerous, and frighteningly expensive ways to store it?

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