“We go from design flaw to design flaw. I don’t want such a big nuclear machine to blow our noses, it’s a moral issue”, explained Yannick Jadot, EELV candidate, guest of Franceinfo’s “Presidential Mornings” on Monday, December 13, about the Flamanville EPR.
>> Yannick Jadot invited to Franceinfo presidential mornings. Follow our live.
Yannick Jadot recalls that only one EPR has so far been put into service worldwide, in China, but that it has already been shut down and that one of its reactors is under construction.
“If Flamanville freaks us out in Normandy, half of France will be under radioactive pollution.”
Yannick Jadotto franceinfo
The environmentalist presidential candidate clarified his position: if the Flamanville EPR, which is due to take office in 2022, is already in service at his election and his nomination, “we are not going to stop him”, but if he is not in service at that time, Yannick Jadot will not put “not in operation a nuclear reactor on which one has major doubts on its capacity to function correctly”.
More broadly, Yannick Jadot recalled that this EPR was to cost 3.3 billion euros and be commissioned in 2012, but it now costs 20 billion euros and is still not in service, and therefore “We are stopping nuclear reactor projects for the simple reason that they are terribly expensive and that today they do not work”.
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The ecologist wanted to calm the concerns of those who fear running out of electricity: “My ambition is not to stop nuclear power plants tomorrow, I am responsible, I will guarantee the supply of electricity to families and businesses. My ambition is to act on energy management, in particular on constrained household spending, heating, electricity, transport, to put France on the path of innovation and the development of renewable energies and gradually , by guaranteeing the supply of electricity, we will close the oldest nuclear reactors “, he concluded. For him, it is all the more necessary to end nuclear power in the long term since the viability of nuclear reactors also depends on climatic hazards – as shown by the nuclear accident caused by a tsunami in Fukushima in 2011.