Inauguration of ACC lithium battery plant on May 30, 2023.
This morning, three French ministers, a German minister, an Italian minister and the CEOs of Mercedes-Benz, Total and Peugeot inaugurated a “cathedral” of electric batteries in the Pas-de-Calais municipalities of Douvrin and Billy-Berclau. The accident rate of lithium batteries from their production to recycling, transport and recharge is truly shocking and frightening. Lithium is prone to thermal runaway.
The Environmental Authority (EA) in its opinion issued in July 2021 on the Automotive Cells Company (ACC) automotive battery plant project recommended to:
– Provide maps of effects and technological risks resulting from hazard study modeling
– Cross-check these data with technological risks from nearby sites (150 m from the gigafactory there is a low-threshold Seveso plant, 1 km away another low-threshold Seveso site and 3 km away a high-threshold Seveso site)
– represent all technological hazards in the area on a single map to analyze possible cumulative and domino effects.
ACC replied that the “the technological effects maps has been made but are confidential. They are attached to the confidential version taken up by the administration. For reasons of confidentiality and industrial safety, these models cannot be made available to the public”.
As a result, the 30,000 residents of the 5 communities surrounding the gigafactory, the teachers and the parents of students of many elementary schools and nurseries, the customers of several hotels and other commercial establishments are deprived of information essential for saving them in the event of a major accident. Similarly, the hundreds of permanent and temporary employees in the industrial zone and users of the logistic corridors are deprived of concrete information on how to carry out an emergency evacuation.
In a second opinion issued in March 2023, the EA noted that the hazard study carried out at the end of 2022 was made before the fire on January 16, 2023 in a Bolloré Logistics warehouse containing lithium batteries in Grand-Couronne near Rouen, and regretted that the feedback from this widespread fire had not been considered in an update of the hazard study. The EA said that “the hazard study does not study in detail the scenario of a fire spreading to an entire block or even two blocks and does not justify that a widespread fire is impossible…”. The EA recommends reasonable use of data confidentiality so as not to prejudice public information.
In response, the ACC hides behind the government instruction of November 6, 2017 on the provision and conditions of access to potentially sensitive information that could facilitate the commission of malicious acts in facilities classified for environmental protection. This instruction had been presented to members of the CSPRT (Conseil Supérieur de la Prévention des Risques Technologiques, Higher Council for Prevention of Technological Risks) on September 5, 2017. Robin des Bois, a member of the CSPRT, had published a press release the very next day entitled “L’instruction omertante” (“The Omerta instruction”), which had caused quite a stir in the offices of the then Prime Minister, the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Ecological and Solidarity Transition. Moreover, on September 28, 2017, the president of Robin des Bois had received a letter on this subject from Nicolas Hulot, then Minister.
Following Robin des Bois’ constant protests and the concerns raised by lawyers within and outside the CSPRT, the Director General of Risk Prevention (DGPR) announced at a CSPRT meeting on March 14, 2023 that the instruction adopted in 2017 under the heading of protection against malicious acts would be re-examined in conjunction with the Ministry of the Interior.
Consequently, in anticipation of this new instruction, Robin des Bois is calling for the publication on the Internet of all information enabling sedentary and temporary populations to prepare adequately for a major accident at this ACC gigafactory subject to the high-threshold Seveso directive.
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