So it has more sites that badly contaminated from the early days, and more equipement that turned out to not be the best choices, and thus are also not easy to deal with.

France had the luxury of learning from UK and US mistakes, and chose the most practical, fully-tested technology for its plants - and used a single design, something that the UK miserably failed to do.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Plus the operators are cash-strapped and skipped on maintenance. Vessels and essential heavy parts are past their intended lifetime.

Sellafield reprocessing plant is a kind of soviet-style eco-disaster akin to the (former) sea of aral. Dunno exactly why they fucked up so badly on this one.

Pierre

I don't think this was ever directly stated, rather various experts suggested that there was no design need for the waste pipe that ran out to sea at all and so began speculating on why it was there. then they found evidence of long term collection of cancer records in the NW that weren't conducted elsewhere and added 2 + 2.

Whether they made 4 or 5 I don't think was ever confirmed, but given the cavalier way the UK govt have treated the population as experimental animals on other occasions it wouldn't be remotely surprising.

keep to the Fen Causeway