The Champagne vineyards of France could face a nuclear disaster, according to Greenpeace which on Tuesday said radioactive underground water had been found just 10 kms from the country’s most prestigious wine producing region.

Attempting to draw attention to its campaign against fuel reprocessing as the French Senate prepares to vote a new law on nuclear waste management, the environmental group said it had written to champagne producers to warn them of the dangers from a local nuclear waste storage site at Soulaine, eastern France.