The secret life of (nuclear) plants

Layers of security and safety precautions are among of the indignities of exploring the innards of a nuclear power station

Relevant offers

Features

Tui's Nick Rogers: The 'Yeah, right' stuff National Library: Bookworm heaven vs wow factor Shattering the glass ceiling Class of 2006 If Wellington was a dish Helen Clark's challenge: filling the begging bowl New York: Helen Clark's kind of town Busy times at Wellington Night Shelter Peter Jackson trivia quiz Halo gives rise to District 9

It's not a glamorous process - stripping to your underwear amongst total strangers.

The protective gear you're required to wear is worse than surgical scrubs - a T-shirt under white garage-mechanic overalls, socks and clompy rubber shoes, gloves, papery cap. Having swapped our out-of-control-zone hard hats for in-control-zone ones, there's just one more thing before we're allowed into the most dangerous section of Penly nuclear power station: everyone must carry an individual dosimeter, to measure personal radiation exposure.

It's about a 20-minute drive from the Dieppe railway station, on France's north coast, to the 230-hectare, fence-encircled power station site. From the carpark above the chalky cliffs, there's no clue to the site's controversial use: no concrete towers, just a visitor's centre and reception building. We swap passports for personalised identity cards and secret four-digit codes and negotiate the first two of about 20 security controls.

It's not till we board the cable car down the cliff to the sea that I get my first glimpse of the installation that inspires such anguish and animosity. To the untrained eye it's just a collection of concrete industrial buildings, two of which - the reactor containment buildings - are cylinders with domed caps. There are still no cooling towers - the plant draws cooling water from the sea.

It seems deserted. The plant has 622 staff, plus 175 permanent subcontractors, spread over the 24 hours of production. About 25 work at any one time on each unit, with another 80 on call.

Even inside the fenced and card-controlled area, there's razor-wire around the exterior pipes. And that's the comparatively low-security zone.

Fully kitted out, we progress to the controlled zone. I'm allowed to take my notebook, but cameras are prohibited. Before we enter, we get the nuclear power station equivalent of the airline stewardess pointing out emergency exits and explaining crash procedures: "Try not to touch the walls as they may be contaminated, and don't touch your face with your gloves. If you have to itch your nose, take your gloves off to do it."

If you're unlucky enough to contaminate some part of your body, our guide explains, you'll have to shower before leaving, and the water will be contained to prevent radioactivity leaving the site.

Worse, if you somehow swallowed any radioactive material, you'd have to suffer the indignity of capturing and returning any contaminated urine or faeces.

But what's most surprising is that, apart from the constant security controls, it all feels remarkably normal.

Reactor coordinator Philippe Lienard, who is also in charge of reactor fuel, moved here from a conventional power station 18 years ago. He gets no special allowances or danger money for working with nuclear power. The risk, he says, is just something you live with. "Dealing with it every day, you know it better than if you're going for an X-ray at the hospital, and pay more attention to it."

In the two months he's been reactor coordinator, close to the plant's greatest radioactive concentration, he's absorbed around 0.6 milliseverts (mSv) of radiation. The maximum dose for one worker in any one year is 20mSv.

Through a tangle of enclosed but connected sections we reach the doors to the cavernous bunker housing the nuclear core. Normally it's a strict no-go area - unbearably loud and stifling with a sickening stench of ammonia, protected by double vacuum-sealed doors five metres apart. But today the plant is shut down for maintenance, so we're allowed inside.

Even here, under a dome that could engulf the entire Arc de Triomphe, everything is strangely routine. There are no pangs of fear, or even awe, as we pass the 54 screws that secure the critical cover sealing off the fuel core where the nuclear reaction takes place. "Screws" is a misnomer - each one stands about 2.5m high and weighs 900 kilograms.

It's much more difficult to leave the core area than to get in. My notebook and pen are confiscated and placed in what looks like a steel microwave oven, to be checked for contamination. A tacky foot pad plucks any potentially contaminated dust from my shoes, and I teeter on one leg, passing a wand over both gloves and shoe soles to check for any radioactive material.

Safely through the control, our parade of canary-yellow hard hats continues to our final stop - the fuel room. Again we enter one by one, swiping our identity cards and tapping in our four-digit codes.

It's a small room, with a deep swimming pool the colour of a Pacific lagoon. It contents are less appealing - a submerged beehive of compartments stores fuel rods before they're placed into the reactor. Every grain of uranium must be accounted for, both in transport and storage. The pool also cools spent fuel for 18 months before it is sealed in lead containers and taken by protected train to La Hague to be processed into recyclables and waste.

It's time to leave the controlled zone. "Controllez-vous Macdonald," the machine orders as I slip my dosimeter into the reader and push my fingers to the ends of two metal pockets. I place my notebook into another steel container and step into a full-body enclosed scanner, quietly hoping my stubbornly slippery cap hasn't left my hair contaminated, and that I won't be subjected to chamber-pot treatment.

There's no swell of alarm bells and I'm spat safely out the other side. But I'm not entirely clean - over about four hours I've clocked up 0.009mSv of radioactivity. That's slightly more than the rest of the group, because I spent longer by the highly contaminated core cap screws.

The controls are part of a national surveillance system, so if I ever go to another French nuclear plant they'll recognise me and the radiation dose I've already received.

They needn't worry: once is enough.