He joined the Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission (CEA) in 1964. For nearly twenty years, Joseph Jaouen worked there as a nuclear weapons assembler. Hired on the L’Île Longue site, off the coast of Brest (Finistère), the Breton worked as a nuclear warhead installer in the pyrotechnic workshop of this classified defense location where France carefully guards its launcher submarines. of gear.
Joseph Jaouen worked there until 2000. His bladder cancer was diagnosed fourteen years later. For five years, he fought against relapses and complications, before dying in 2019. Since that date, his family has tried to have his employer convicted, believing that the CEA is guilty of an inexcusable fault.
Ionizing rays for almost ten years
According to Me Hermine Baron, lawyer for the family, Joseph Jaouen “was exposed in a regular and habitual manner to ionizing and neutron radiation”. Before the Brest criminal court, the lawyer relied on the opinion of doctors specializing in the recognition of occupational diseases. According to them, professional activity “certainly exposed him to ionizing rays between 1983 and 1991. This exposure is sufficiently characterized to establish a link between the pathology and professional activity”.
To work, Joseph Jaouen was only equipped with gloves and overalls. “Very insufficient” protection according to his family’s lawyer. An opinion that the CEA council does not share. “There is no link between the illnesses and Mr. Jaouen’s work. If we want to prove the opposite, we must rely on precise elements,” replied Me Franck Dremaux.
According to the Henri Pézerat association, which supports the Jaouen family and others “irradiated by nuclear weapons”, neutron radiation is “20 times more effective, that is to say dangerous” than other types of radiation. The court reserved its decision until January 30, 2025.