Jordan Bardella defended on Monday January 17 on franceinfo the construction of new EPRs, if Marine Le Pen wins the 2022 presidential election. According to the president of the National Rally, “Nuclear remains one of the cleanest energies” and to prove it, he advanced this argument: “There is a ranking, a study that was done by Yale University a few months ago which told us that thanks to nuclear power, France was the second cleanest country in the world, after Switzerland.” Except that it is rather false, the True of False cell explains it to you.
First, France is not 2nd in this environmental index actually designed by Yale University in the United States. In fact, that was the case four years ago but since then we have dropped to 5th place. Above all, it is not “thanks to nuclear power”, as Jordan Bardella says that France figures prominently in this ranking. This index takes into account a whole series of environmental criteria that change from year to year to compare performance in 180 countries. In total, 32 very different indicators are monitored. We find for example the quality of air, water, CO2 emissions, biodiversity, agriculture or waste management.
If we look at the detail for France, it gains a few points thanks to nuclear power, but not only. We have, like many other countries, the highest score on the protection of marine, terrestrial or species areas. These are for example Natura 2000 protected sites, there are just over 1,700 in France. Like other developed countries, we also rank well on public health criteria. Clearly, these good points make us go up in the standings while there is no link with nuclear power. Conversely, if we remove France’s good scores on biodiversity and focus for example only on greenhouse gas emissions per capita, we fall to 117th place.