Safety exercise around the Flamanville nuclear power plant: 118 schools confined

A civil security exercise is taking place on Thursday in Manche, near the Flamanville EPR. Hundreds of students will find themselves confined to schools.

As part of a security exercise at the Flamanville nuclear power plant (Manche), 118 schools will be confined on Thursday October 16, reports HERE Cotentin (formerly France Bleu). “All students and staff will be sheltered in their establishment, in order to test the procedures, as part of the exercise“, explains the Manche prefecture. Schools will also carry out evacuation exercises.

As part of this simulation, organized by local authorities, the prefecture and EDF, residents in a 20 kilometer sector around the plant will receive a message from the FR-Alert system indicating that a civil security exercise is in progress.

“It’s a simulation, we mainly want to educate the population”

The objective is to test the implementation of the Special Security Plan, specifies the prefecture, while the last exercise of this type dated from 2022. The exercise will also be used to evaluate “internal technical management (from the nuclear power plant) and then communicate as best as possible with the emergency chain and the authorities, external to the plant“, Grégory Heinfling, head of the Flamanville EPR, told ICI Cotentin.