«information is a weapon of resistance»: the festival the Bure’lesques took place this weekend at Hévilliers (Meuse), in a friendly atmosphere, to raise public awareness of the dangers of the project of landfill of nuclear waste in Bure, a village nearby. In a field at the exit of the village, several large tents of the circus, red and yellow, have hosted conferences, debates, screenings and performances.
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«Bure or elsewhere… Bury? Never,» «abandonment, it is now», is it written on signs at the entrance to the site. On a mound of sand, dozens of tents are lined up. Dry toilets are installed here and there. A drawing of a polar bear balancing on a bogus yellow with the symbol for radioactive drifting in the water, crossed out the reference to «nuclear power does not save the climate», is pinned on the fabric of the village associations.
As a barnum, of members of collectives and associations of antinuclear inform visitors, books and brochures in hand. «The philosophy of this festival is to touch a maximum of people with family shows, information, and quality conferences», says Johan Hervelin, one of the organizers. A ten kilometers, at Bure, is installed in the research laboratory of the industrial Centre of geological storage (Cigéo), dubbed by opponents the «trash » atomic». This project, conducted by the national Agency for radioactive waste management (Andra) is to bury it 500 metres underground and about 85.000 m3 of waste, the most radioactive or long-life of French nuclear reactors, starting in 2035.
communication «erroneous, truncated, false»
Shows and concerts throughout the event all weekend. The Bure’lesques/Capture Twitter
«information is a weapon of resistance and it is the occasion to take stock of the situation» on Cigéo, » says Corinne Francis, an organizer and member of Burestop. Among the festival-goers, who were 2000 Saturday, according to the organizers, and a little less Sunday, «a lot of Meusiens, which could not be seen on the other events anti-Cigéo, and people ask a lot of questions,» she says. «It is important that there is a counterpoint to information provided by Andra, which makes the communication wrong, truncated, false one,» she said.
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in Front of the canteen, which distributes local products, the queue lengthens and musicians, the Bure’Haleurs, tying the songs in ana. «It is where the crowd dangerous?», taunt Marie, 60 years old, and Jean-Michel, 71 years of age, in reference to the dams of constables installed on the access of the festival. The couple of friends, prevented in the past to hike close to the wood Lejuc – epicentre of the protest, a time occupied by the opponents, was concerned about «possible lapses» project Cigéo on the area.
«It’s not the parents’ sanctimonious, they are taken here, so that they learn what they want»
Marlene, living in the vicinity of Nancy, enjoys shows with her four children, aged one to 11 years, while raising awareness of the nuclear issue. «It’s not the parents’ sanctimonious, they are taken here, so that they learn what they want,» she said, confident, however, be «concerned for them and for us too».
on Saturday, an engineer agronomist, Bernard Thuillier, has developed at a conference why the clay, in charge of water, was «the worst rock to bury radioactive waste». And on Sunday, Yannick Rousselet, Greenpeace France, has insisted on «the global crisis of nuclear waste». «The fight against Bure is very important because Cigéo is a fundamental element of the supply chain: advancing the solution of the landfill, it is easier for the policy to continue to operate nuclear power plants or to build», stressed Yannick Rousselet. «It is a fight of long-term,» says a volunteer who calls himself Dom. When he was fifteen years, he participated in the first demonstrations against the project in the 1990s», who gathered «a lot of the world».
«The problem is that we tend to forget: the information pass, the project takes a long time to be put in place. But this festival shows that there is a mobilization against the nuclear and against the Cigéo», does he want to believe.