Caryatid

http://basse-normandie.france3.fr/20...in-236005.html
Not very clear but it seems that the MOX was produced 40km away from Cherbourg

Novocastrian

Agreed, the article is a bit misleading, but the AREVA plant doesn't actually produce MOX, it separates uranium and plutonium from spent fuel rods. The recovered uranium is returned to its country of origin and the plutonium is shipped either to the same places or to one of the 2 French MOX production plants elsewhere in France. This is all a bit off topic but here's a link if you're interested in reading more...

http://www.areva.com/EN/operations-1...used-fuel.html

Caryatid

Well buying property is linked to the local environment. You want to try to keep your health and the value of your property. I remember seeing or reading something where soil or atmospheric tests had been done and there was a high level of plutonium found in an area (Normandy/Bretagne) around a nuclear installation. The French media is so controlled that this stuff gets out from time to time but then you never see it again.

Novocastrian

Nonetheless, I think the Brittany property market has been characterized perfectly well already on this thread. I don't believe that a nuclear plant near Cherbourg has any influence on it, but you may choose to disagree.

Tweedpipe

Sometimes one's health and the value of their property do not go hand-in-hand.
With the increase in many French property prices over the years, some retired, zero tax rated, home owners (many very poor), have received huge tax demands due to the value of their property creeping into the ISF tax regime. In other words they have become virtual 'fortuned' folks without wanting to be, and faced with huge tax demands - money that that they simply don't have at their disposal. Many inhabitants of l'île de Ré spring to mind in recent years.

Nora77

is the cheap price applies to the properties on the south cost?

I dont think so, guess why...

Caryatid

Why would you think that these two factors were not exclusive...? Most people don't want to make a choice to live in an environment that poses important health risks. Loosing value on your investment is not usually sought after either. Highly taxed property owners is an old story. It was the subject of my first 'letter to the editor' when I was 9 years old! ( and that's a good while back).

EuroTrash

I honestly think that the only people who get aeriated about all this are the people who don't live in Normandy or Brittany. People who live there, some of whom have lived there there all their lives, know first hand that none of it intrudes on daily life, maybe it is a case of familiarity breeds contempt but it's just not something that you worry about. It is employment in an area where there aren't lots of jobs, it doesn't put the tourists off, and the region's population is not sick and dying. If the ditches in Cotentin were heaped with day-glo bodies, people would have noticed it by now and done something about it - but they're not.

Last summer (2012) there was a boating lake in Wales closed because of green algae, a month later it was open again and people were boating on it. It isn't only Brittany that has green algae and it isn't something that makes an area uninhabitable from now to eternity. I think we need to get these things into their proper perspective.

(now let's play devil's advocate) I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the THT lines yet, surely they're a lot worse risk to health

bigglesworth

What are THT lines?

EuroTrash

http://www.stop-tht.org/

It's electricity pylons. OK so nobody particularly wants them IMBY but the fuss that was made by people who saw the £££s about to drop off of their property value (and I mean ££££ not €€€€, because apart from the anti-nuke brigade it was mostly second-home owners who got into a state about it) you would have thought the end of the world was nigh.

bigglesworth

Well, as I have the TGV being built only a mile away

and hear the incessant thrum of the local wind-farm about the same distance
(louder every year despite my advancing years)

At any rate an electricity pylon might have some use

Nora77

dont you know

bigglesworth

If I told you my given name was michaeleenoag...........

Caryatid

Yes, lets gets things in their proper perspective and not discuss them, that way people remain ignorant.

Tweedpipe

Who was it that once said, "A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."