Explosion at French nuclear site

12 September 2011 Last updated at 09:28 ET

One person has been killed and four injured, one seriously, by a blast at the Marcoule nuclear in France.

There was no risk of a radioactive leak after the blast, caused by a fire near a furnace in the Centraco radioactive waste storage , said officials.

The plant’s owner, national electricity provider EDF, said it had been “an industrial accident, not a nuclear accident”.

There are no nuclear reactors at the southern French .

The explosion hit the area at 11:45 local time (09:45 GMT).

“For the time being nothing has made it outside,” said a spokesman for France’s Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).

The Centraco treatment centre belongs to a subsidiary of EDF. It produces MOX fuel, which recycles plutonium from nuclear weapons.

The EDF spokesman said the furnace affected had been burning contaminated waste, including fuels, tools and clothing which had been used in nuclear energy production.

“The fire caused by the explosion was under control,” he said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it was in touch with the French authorities to learn more about the nature of the explosion.

Director General Yukiya Amano said the organisation’s incident centre had been “immediately activated”, Reuters reports.

Nuclear power meets 75% of France’s energy needs.

Marcoule was opened in 1955 and is one of France’s oldest nuclear s, though it has been extensively modernised.

It is located in the Gard department in Languedoc-Roussillon region, near France’s Mediterranean coast.

All the country’s 58 nuclear reactors have been put through stress tests in recent months, following the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant which was hit by an earthquake and tsunami.

EDF’s share prices fell by more than 6% as news of the blast emerged.

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