Parliament definitively adopts the law to revive the nuclear sector

To facilitate the construction of new reactors, Parliament definitively adopted, Tuesday, May 16, the nuclear revival bill, by a final vote of the National Assembly, where the cause of the atom is gaining ground.

A week after broad support from the Senate, the deputies voted for the text by 399 votes to 100, with a coalition of votes from the presidential camp, LR, RN and communists. Only the environmental groups and LFI voted against. The PS, which opposed the text at first reading, abstained this time, after describing nuclear power as a “transitional energy” towards renewables.

Six new EPR reactors

The Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, boasts of a “major text” For “produce independent, competitive and carbon-free energy”, and calls for a “political consensus” in terms of energy. In the morning, she had brought together in Paris about fifteen representatives of pro-nuclear European countries, in order to weigh in on the energy strategy of the European Union.

Technical, the French bill simplifies the steps in order to concretize the ambition of Emmanuel Macron to build six new EPR reactors by 2035 and to launch studies for eight others.

It concerns new facilities located in existing nuclear sites or nearby, such as Penly (Seine-Maritime) or Gravelines (Nord). In the wake of the Senate, parliamentarians lifted a lock introduced in 2015 under François Hollande, and already modified under Emmanuel Macron. The text thus removes the objective of a reduction to 50% of the share of nuclear energy in the French electricity mix by 2035 (initially 2025), just like the ceiling of 63.2 gigawatts of total capacity of licensed nuclear production.