Human societies are exposed to hazards.
In order to avoid these hazards, we put various prevention and protection strategies in place
With the industrialization since the 19th century,
the climax of the consumer society and globalisation of exchanges,
those risks increased.
Radioactive wastes are produced by numerous business sectors
using the radioactive properties.
Those wastes' radioactivity can be a health risk.
Therefore they need to be specifically handled,
in order to isolate them from humans until their radioactivity has sufficiently reduced and is no longer a threat.
For the last thirty years, ANDRA scientists and engineers started studies,
and particularly explored the French territory
in order to find a geological site
which would have the distinctive properties to allow to delay and limit the radioactivity
within the wastes.
If I'm not mistaken, Bure has a population of 80 inhabitants or so.
And Mandres-en-Barrois, which is the village that previously owned the Lejuc Wood,
has a hundred inhabitants.
So they're tiny villages,
where there are no local amenities, no shop, no bakery, no corner shop...
It's important to know that ANDRA had previously tried to settle on different territories,
such as Corrèze or Maine-et-Loire
where they found strong local opposition.
And in Meuse, because of rural desertification,
there was nobody to fight against it
so they have been able to get established there.
They're not particularly interested in Meuse's geological properties.
They're interested in its social acceptability.
This is what really triggered the implantation of the project there... Social acceptability…
Since there were 7 inhabitants per km² and a strong resignation because of rural exodus
there's also an agro-industrial model that developed
that pushed farmers out of the countryside.
ANDRA and policemen, go irradiate yourselves!
After a three-week occupation,
a call to take over the wood is made on the 16th July 2016.
Despite the police presence, hundreds of people will succeed in getting into the wood.
ANDRA is a state owned company which aims to
manage the wastes
from the civil nuclear development, and perhaps on the long run the military one.
Beneath what we see here, there is an underground activity?
Yes, there will be a myriad of tunnels,
it's going to be eventually 160 kilometres of tunnels,
and the main issue on the long run
will be how to maintain these tunnels.
When I say "on the long run", I mean hundreds, thousands of years maybe.
We're told "it's concrete", "those tunnels are built in specific conditions"
but so far, when we look at bridge works or nuclear power plants after 40-50 years
Aging concrete wears out and the framework becomes rusty…
There are cracks, gaps, water infiltration…
Therefore there is no way we could commit ourselves to projects lasting hundreds or thousands of years
This is merely a ploy.
Do you know if the 11AM meeting is still on?
Is everybody teamed up with someone to stay safe?
Cops are coming through the forest.
In 2005, the project was estimated to 16,5 billion euros.
Today, ANDRA estimates it to 34,5 billion euros.
And we have former Minister of Environment Ségolène Royal’s Ordinance of 16th January 2015
stating the budget forecast not to be exceeded is 25 billion euros.
When building the lab, we knew that the CIGEO project would follow
But when we said that to the population, nobody would listen to us.
And the population is offered million euros
Even the small businessman and the baker of Mandres-en-Barrois would get money…
So everybody keeps quiet,
because money is flowing and jobs are promised.
They’ll manage to offer you a night guard or a cleaner position.
That's how they silence people.
“You won’t see it again…”
We clog it with everything we can
and there's no machine anymore.
They started to build this wall after the eviction of the first occupation
At first, they only cleared the forest
And used the wood to build a fence all around
They dug a 7-kilometer trench with barbed wired posts every 3 meter
Obviously it wasn't enough to stop us from getting into the woods, they needed to build something stronger.
It's actually the first time that a national agency which hasn't carried the project out yet, i.e CIGEO
floods the region with public money to secure acceptance of the project.
Indeed, if you walk around Mandres-en-Barrois, you can see brand new flashy street lamps,
and a renovated community hall.
It has all been paid off by the GIP money [Public Interest Group], it's a guilt-free pass.
For two days, the CIGEO opponents tried to take a look and reach the wall built by ANDRA.
Protected by mobile guards, vigils and a helicopter, they didn't make it.
This corruption can be seen in the higher levels of the French society such as Public Services
French stock market companies (CAC 40)… The same group of privileged people who attended the same schools,
such as Ecole Polytechnique, X-Mines.. now gravitates and controls the economic and political realms.
The occupation has been a surprise for them
because it lasted, because it attracted lots of people
from everywhere. From Paris, but especially
from the East: Nancy, Metz, Verdun, etc... It attracted people who had never been involved in the Bure conflict beforehand.
This is worth a mention for sure
I think this took them by surprise.
And also some Medias started to broadcast the Bure struggle
which was absolutely nonexistent before.
They charged. It was only three of us.
We didn't expect them to come in numbers.
We thought it was handover time.
We barely had the time to make it to the South Barricade to warn the others with the walkie-talkie
By the time people came, they had already taken over the Barricade and seized people’s belongings
and they were heading back when we managed to take the area back
So we lost a lot of things but managed to spare some.
The atmosphere is tense, it's like a state of siege.
Who owns the forest?
We do!
Be careful, there's a barricade behind them!
During the demonstration on 16th and 17th, we have only been able to partially occupy the wood. It was an incomplete victory.
What struck me most was the presence of mercenaries
that you can't really distinguish from policemen.
They have helmets, Plexiglas shields, truncheons, pick handles, tear gas grenades
and they feel free to hit opponents with pick handles.
Once I was at the House of Resistance and I saw people
with grenade splinters, flash-ball injuries...
It was a rather violent weekend.
It was very hard but at the same time we managed to set the frame to a strong political act.
The pilot phase is ANDRA’s communication strategy.
Today we're already in the preliminary works:
ANDRA started to clear the forest in June without applying for permit.
but the Forest Code enforces the obligation to follow the procedure
when the clearing is above 10 meters square.
So ANDRA is actually the one breaking the law?
Indeed, and this is not their first unlawful conduct
and they keep taking illegal actions
they're going way too fast, they feel like they're above the law
and want to force their way through.
As of today's date, ANDRA is bound to restore all the cleared areas in a six-month period
and get a permit for the following of its project
There were blackberries ("mûres") here, now we have a wall ("mur")
On July the 25th, associations and inhabitants submit an emergency interim proceeding against the laboratory and the beginning of the works.
On August the 1st, the Court of Bar-le-Duc rules in favour of the antinuclear opponents.
“It looks like there's a funeral in Mandres
because we can see many cars…”
“Who do we bury today?”
“It's a wedding!”
I'm a pacifist at heart
but when you take a look at what is going on here…
There are days when I just want to destroy…
I'd like to throw a gas bottle somewhere in the depths of the lab.
Had we carried out such actions at the very beginning of the lab construction…
I think we wouldn't be in this mess.
"ACABADABRA and the wall disappears."
A wall, a mallet, a class justice.
"License to pollute?"
"Walls will fall or burn"
This contempt started with the very beginning of the French nuclear industry
considering the way the French nuclear stock has been imposed with the 1974 Peillon Commission
It happened very quickly
One morning, the Prime Minister calls the EDF director (EDF = Éléctricité de France)
He asked "How many power plants do you want?"
EDF gave very high number in order to get half of it
but in the end, the Prime Minister gave it all
without any public consultation.
Until two months ago, I thought their silence meant
"We don't need to communicate or justify ourselves to you"
Now with the confrontation with the guards, the occupation that forced them to build this wall…
I even read an article where they admitted that it was a strategic mistake,
because a building a wall is not really low-key and it is a pretty brutal method of operating – even for them.
it doesn't really fit their usual communication strategies.
I think that was our biggest achievement: push their limits
to make them show their true colours: the violence,
the disproportionate law-enforcement measures,
the building of this wall costing several hundred thousand Euros and the accelerated destruction of the forest without any permit to proceed…
It is thanks to our offensive action that we made them build the wall without authorization
because they actually didn't have the time, they wholeheartedly wanted to protect their shitty construction site.
That's what we mostly managed to do: get them to break out of this damn silence and their pedestal.
Is there somebody behind?
This is a pile of shit.
How are the helicopters equipped today?
Well they're equipped with devices that allow them to take zoomed photographs so they can recognize faces
and for instance, we're in the forest so we're supposed to feel safe because we're hidden in greenery
but it's not true because some are equipped with thermal sensors
There's no recognition of bodies
but they at least know where we are in the forest,
so they know how many we are, what we do, our whereabouts…
ANDRA, get out!
Summer of emergency, third round
3 to 0
3 for the pirates, 0 for ANDRAAAA
The nuclear industry and the politicians supporting it
need to show that they "finally have a way to handle these wastes"
in order to keep selling nuclear products to foreign countries
and to keep taking resources from countries in Africa.
What bothers me is not only the environmental angle
there's also the angle of the technological domination of a country such as France over what we call "developing countries"
which we're still stealing resources from. And sometimes we even think about putting our wastes in those countries.
Here, we're at the end of the chain
but we see that even when we're going after the end of the chain, we're actually going after all of it
because CIGEO is here to legitimate and to allow the continuity of nuclear industry.
Foreign countries to which we want to sell nuclear energy ask "What do we do with wastes?"
"Don't worry, we'll soon have CIGEO"
If we stop CIGEO, we assert that there's no solution to the nuclear problem
and that all this production is nonsense, unsolvable and highly dangerous
so when we're going after to a link, we're going after the rest of the chain.
On August the 14th 2016, in Meuse, 300 people knocked down a 1-kilometer concrete wall
1000 parts of wall fell, against the nuclear industry, its wastes and the CIGEO project