Translation of "Fusion du cœur du réacteur " (French → English) :

– (DE) Mr President, following the disaster of Chernobyl 25 years ago, new investigations by the Society for Radiation Protection show that to date 1.4 million people have died from the long-term consequences of the nuclear meltdown.

Let me give you a short list: Tihange in Belgium, Civaux in France, Philippsburg in Germany, Kozloduy in Bulgaria, Paks in Hungary, Brunsbüttel in Germany, where there was a hydrogen explosion, Forsmark in Sweden, Barsebäck in Sweden, Blayais in France, Krümmel in Germany – this is a list of the most striking incidents that have occurred, with a range of different causes, since Chernobyl, where we have found ourselves on the threshold of nuclear meltdown.

We must be much more honest and should admit that we in the European Union have frequently been confronted with situations verging on nuclear meltdown in the plants that we operate.

A. whereas the recent earthquake with thousands of victims in North-Eastern Japan led to the shutdown of a number of Japan's operational nuclear reactors and whereas the following tsunami with tidal waves higher than 10 meters destroyed not only the existing power grids but also the backup and emergency supply systems of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant; whereas the resulting lack of cooling capacity led to overheating of some of the nuclear fuel elements and to a meltdown of parts the core reactor; whereas so far the IAEA qualified these developments as a serious accident (level 6) on the international INES scale,

Its responsibility is to guard against a reactor meltdown, not to ensure the production of isotopes.

The newspaper 'Neues Volksblatt' of 16 December 2006 contains a report on the alarming outcome of a study by the German Association for Nuclear Safety (GRS), which states that the population would be exposed to radioactive contamination without any protection in the event of a core meltdown in the Bavarian nuclear power station Isar I.