Executive director : J. DUBOIS, magistrate, professor of Universities

Radioactivity is as old as our Universe.
The awareness of its existence by human goes back to 1896 when a French scientist, Henri Becquerel, found the uranic rays. A remarkable work in experimental physics allowed Marie Sklodowska Curie to materialize this discovery, throughout a note, on April 12th of 1898, at the Comptes Rendus of the Science Academy, entitled "Rays emitted by the compounds of uranium and thorium."

Today, pacific and war some applications of radioactivity are part of our daily life and are publicly known. However, atomic energy scares people because, ignoring the tremendous services given to society, they have a double image of it: the one of a terrifying nuclear explosion and the one, more vicious, of an invisible and silent force that kills.
Then again, information concerning scientific knowledge is not well transmitted. A great confusion reigns regarding the semantic of this physical phenomenon, and particularly the terms 'activation', 'irradiation' and 'contamination'.
In France, the nuclear industry is without a doubt the one that is the most submitted to safety regulations implying the Principle of Precaution. The technical conceptions as well as the meticulous care brought to maintenance and control supports this idea. However, a zero-risk level does not exist. Considering this fear, which is confirmed by real facts, the positive aspect of nuclear energy in terms of clean use for electricity production or therapeutic goals, does not weigh much for some people who are particularly sensitive to this matter.
It is true that nuclear waste is rather scary. Wouldn't it be more suitable to get rid of them by throwing them out in a volcano or by injecting them directly in a drill-hole that reaches the magma instead of stocking them in structures that are fragile on a long term and therefore dangerous?
Actually, the two main fears are contamination and irradiation. These two phenomenons can result from voluntary or involuntary acts.
An involuntary act can be defined as an accident that is provoked by a malfunctioning or a natural catastrophe.

A voluntary act can be defined as a terrorist or a war act. In both cases, the consequent damages can be irreversible for a great part of the living and therefore for man.
In the first case, the loss and the damages can be evaluated and lead to a reparation as well as legal penalties, that will not however equal the loss of a human life. Risk always exists, just by the presence of nuclear power plants that are not very safe as in the case of Chernobyl.
In the second case, what can we do when, after thousands of years of evolution of human civilization, man is still a predator for man? Humankind itself is guilty at charge! The evaluation of the risks and damages, prevention, precaution and responsibility are all only good intentions created to manage a society that hesitates to choose between its animal drive and its? perhaps utopian? dreams, of liberty, equality, fraternity and happiness.
It is therefore imperative to protect man against himself. In order to do that, we must manage the past to predict the future.
The past is Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the experimental shooting of nuclear bombs, the nuclear power plants and their waste and Chernobyl with its contaminated territories; but it is also therapies that are correctly used and other medical analyses that are using radioactivity.
The future is the optimization of the application of atomic energy towards peaceful goals (while waiting for some more clean energies), and moreover it is the terrorist use of isotopes that are sold out by former U.S.S.R. countries. Terrorism is the form of violence that is the most difficult to fight. It is insidious, invisible, psycho trope and suicidal, and therefore it is unpredictable and difficult to deal with.

IACPP studies all the juridical means that will allow the application of the Principle of Precaution:
o To the territories contaminated by the explosion of Chernobyl.
o To the management of the nuclear power plants and to the future of their waste.
o To the damages susceptible to be caused by natural cataclysms.
o To radioactive terrorism.
o To pacific use of the radioactivity.

This is necessary in order to anticipate problems inherent to the use of the atom at a planetary level, at a time when the needs for energy will only increase, especially with the alarming population growth for the centuries to come