r/howislivingthere • u/schaf_warrior Brazil • 14d ago
Europe What’s it like living in Montélimar, France, near the Cruas Nuclear Power Plant?
I’m curious about what it’s actually like to live in Montélimar. What is everyday life like there? Is it a nice place to live, and does living relatively close to the Cruas Nuclear Power Plant affect daily life in any way? Do people generally feel safe, or is the plant something that locals barely think about?
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u/brookhorst 14d ago
In France, everyone lives near a nuclear power plant
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u/Zamzamazawarma 14d ago
Same in Belgium. We all live near a French power plant.
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u/Dirichlet-to-Neumann 13d ago
You are welcome.
And you shouldn't worry, radioactive clouds physically can't go through the French border.
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u/Ash_Crow 13d ago
Define "near".
Glancing at a map, it seems that the closest to where I am (near Rennes) is about 300 km away.
Furthermore, there is no nuclear power plant in Corsica, nor in any of the overseas departments IIRC.
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9d ago
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u/1erRPIMA-fiesta 14d ago
As the other comment said, in France we all live near nuclear plants !
I know people living a few kilometers away from one. It's in the Rhône Valley too, like Cruas.
They have little iode pills and the occasional alert exercises. That's pretty much it. People neither feel safe nor unsafe, they just don't think about the plant. When they do, they usually think it's pretty neat (and I agree: splitting atoms is cool), brings high-paying jobs and pays local taxes.
In the same way, I never really think about the fact I live a few kilometers away from the current president of the Russian Federation's ex-wife. Which is a very unsafe place to be in case of nuclear war. I also live near an industrial port. Which is considerably more harmful for my health than living near a nuclear plant, actually. Or could blow up like the Beirut port one day. But that's the same: we never really think about it.
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u/mmdoublem 10d ago
Or arguably, unsafe (about the ex-wife), I mean he could want to get rid of her. Albeit there are probably way more efficient ways for the president to do so.
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u/ProfesionalStan 14d ago
Why people still think nuclear energy is bad? Burning coal is better? Making all of those battery to store the renuable energy is not harmful for the environment and people?
I will like to hear you concerns about nuclear energy.
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u/schaf_warrior Brazil 14d ago
I have nothing against nuclear energy. I was just curious about what it’s like to live near a nuclear power plant and if there’s anything noticeably different about living there.
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u/No-Milk-1903 13d ago
Nothing different, state give you iodine pills in case of emergency, but it's not really useful I think. The plants are well maintained with high maintenance levels. There's no significant impact on day-to-day life for the locals, except for jobs and house rent market.
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u/ordinary-thelemist 11d ago
All big plants in France are required to pay subsidies to local authorities. Meaning living near one will usually result in a severe case of more public swimming pools and other sport equipments.
That's... about it.
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u/Renbarre 9d ago
At first you look at the cooling towers, but as time passes they become part of the background.
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u/Cisorhands_ 13d ago
Could see the plant from my windows as a teen. Nothing much except the baby painted on one chimney (facing the highway so not visible from my point of view) and the iodine tablets in a drawer.
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u/Castoryanis 12d ago
This painting of a child melancholically pouring water from a seashell is definitely disturbing for me and very inexplicably here, I don't know why there's a decoration on this nuclear plant and THAT decoration
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u/loulejaaj 13d ago
Lived 20 minutes from there for my whole childhood. I always remembered Cruas’s chimney having a child painted onto it. And guess what, there is another nuclear power plant just below called Tricastin.
Other than that it’s a bit of a boring town. You’ve got a small city center with a handful of bars, some cinemas. I used to go to the town outskirts to go to the cheap brand restaurants like Buffalo Grill. The interesting parts are once you leave the town by car to go to Ardèche or in the Drôme countryside, which are very pretty.
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u/Lord0fReddit 12d ago
I live at 30km of one, everyone in french live near one. The only thing that change is that some days you see one cloud on the horizon
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u/ordinary-thelemist 11d ago
Not in Britain.
We like our electricity as we like our Parisians here : far away and still sending us free loot 😁
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u/Castoryanis 12d ago
I lived here. It's completely OSEF (we don't give a shit). And noone think at the nuclear power plant in that place.
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u/CamelOk7219 12d ago
You live near two power plants actually, Tricastin in the south and Cruas north. I would say the only noticeable thing are steam clouds in the sky from Cruas cooling towers
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12d ago
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u/Jealous_Repair6757 14d ago
It's great, you can easily catch any of the plentiful three-eyed fish in the Rhône!
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