France today placed ground-to-air missile batteries at a major nuclear reprocessing plant, and the local commander said any aircraft which ventured into the zone and failed to respond to warnings could be shot down.
Captain Hugues Cholley, in charge of the units, refused to say how many missile batteries were due to be installed at the site, but he said that in the event of an aircraft flying towards the plant and refusing to heed warnings to land, the batteries could open fire extremely quickly.
Cap Cholley said that if a radar unit set up overlooking the plant last week detected a plane entering the restricted zone, F-1 fighters would initially be scrambled from a nearby base to try and force it to land.
The installation of the missiles is part of security arrangements put in place since September 11th.
Nuclear specialists have warned that if a plane were to crash into a nuclear plant like the facility at La Hague, the effect could be considerably worse than that of the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl in Ukraine, the world's worst peacetime nuclear incident to date.
As part of the new arrangements, French authorities have enlarged the no-fly security perimeter around the La Hague plant, and created a second, wider perimeter within which any aircraft has to identify itself.
AFP