CONTENT

1) THE FACTS SO FAR

Thomas FRONTE is a French design engineer who reported safety gaps about the supply of equipment and services for nuclear reactors; he was immediately denigrated and dismissed.
He brought the case to the French justice but he lost; the Labour court did not take into account the nuclear safety rules and put the employer's interests first ; the grounding of the judgement criticised T. FRONTE for issuing reports which in fact were the alerting documentation as per nuclear safety rules. The newspaper Le Monde investigated the events and published an article (24th May 2000) . The reactions to this article say a lot :

abroad France...

the article published by Le Monde triggered questions by parliamentarians in Belgium ; more than thirty articles have been published so far in newspapers or in television programs; investigations were ordered by the justice, by the Premier of Belgium, by the European Commission...

in France...

the events were ignored by official analysts and commentators. Silence is so deep that so far nothing has been published about hearings at the criminal court where five executives have been summoned to justify their actions in nuclear safety related operations .

2) DEBATE BETWEEN T. FRONTE and the CSSIN

The CSSIN is one of those organisations which deliberately disregarded the above events. The board (Ph. LAZAR, A. MACLACHLAN ...) and the members who represent the French press (F. NODE-LANGLOIS, F.MONNIER, J. MEILLON, Y. LEERS...) have been challenged to explain their behaviour.

T. Fronte's claims...

In short:
- The journalists which are members of the CSSIN have not yet achieved their information mission. If silence was not their intent, impediments which prevents from publishing embarrassing information should be adressed?

Answer by the board of the CSSIN...

In short:
T. FRONTE's alerts were ignored because they were regarded as an attempt to ease his conscience.
T. FRONTE was a plain citizen, and therefore he was not entitled to challenge the CSSIN.

T. FRONTE considered that the above answers were unrespectful of civil and nuclear safety culture; he alerted the individual members of the CSSIN ; as a result:

- two members of the CSSIN, Mrs MACLACHLAN and Mr NODE-LANGLOIS, presented the case to their colleagues (20th June 2002);

- the French Administration DDSC (Department of Civil Protection and Safety) declared that the case concerning T. FRONTE was within the scope of the CSSIN (25th June 2002).

3) EIGHT QUESTIONS about the silence of the journalists which are members of the CSSIN

While so far journalists based out of France have published more than 30 articles on the above mentioned story, the members of the CSSIN have hushed up. Therefore the following questions have been raised:

QUESTIONS RAISED BY T. FRONTE:

Question n. 1 (31st May 2002): Are the journalists members of the CSSIN capable to inform the public on nuclear safety irregularities?

Question n. 2 (31 mai 2002): (31st May 2002): Are the journalists members of the CSSIN capable to take the necessary steps to get independent and objective information?

Question n. 3 (31 mai 2002): (31st May 2002): Are the journalists members of the CSSIN prepared to overcome obstacles to their professional mission

Question n. 4 (31 mai 2002): (31st May 2002): Are the journalists members of the CSSIN immune to any form of censorship

Question n. 5 (31st May 2002): How the journalists members of the CSSIN react when a press article is obscured , as for instance it happened with the French newspaper LE PARISIEN.

Question n. 6 (28th October 2002: ) On the 20th of June 2002 two members of the Council, Mrs MacLACHLAN and M NODE-LANGLOIS, had information enough to present the above mentioned story. These two commentators are also journalists. Which information have they published up to this date, 28th October 2002, to inform their readers ?

Question n. 7 (28th October 2002): Which information has been published so far, the 28th of October 2002, by the other journalists after they were informed by the presentation as member of the CSSIN ?

Question n. 8 (28th October 2002): How the information presented to the Council by Mrs MacLACHLAN and Mr NODE-LANGLOIS can be accessed by those people who are interested in nuclear safety