President Emmanuel Macron announced on Tuesday that France would build new nuclear reactors on its soil, however postponing the details.
“We will, for the first time in decades, relaunch the construction of nuclear reactors in our country and continue to develop renewable energies,” he said in a televised address. However, he has not given more details for the moment on the schedule or on the type of reactor envisaged or on the location of the installations.
This “to guarantee the energy independence of France, to guarantee the electricity supply of our country and to achieve our objectives, in particular carbon neutrality in 2050”, he argued.
France, which derives most of its electricity from nuclear power, is currently building only one new nuclear reactor, the Flamanville EPR (Manche, west), the work of which began in 2007 has still not been completed after many delays and additional costs.
But it plans to build six additional EPRs and the electricity company EDF submitted a file to the government in the spring on the feasibility and conditions of such a program. President Macron also recently announced investments in future small reactors (SMR), but whose horizon is more distant than that of the EPR, copies of which are already in service in China.
Nuclear power is one of the themes of the presidential pre-campaign of 2022, some candidates advocating a more or less rapid exit (environmentalists or rebels) while others (especially on the right and the far right but also in the Communist Party ) are favorable to this energy.
“If we want to pay for our energy at reasonable rates and not depend on foreign countries, we must both continue to save energy and invest in the production of carbon-free energy on our soil”, said Emmanuel Macron.
“These investments will allow us to live up to our commitments when we close the COP26 in Glasgow”, he assured, after having already underlined the advantages of nuclear energy in recent months, in particular the climatic point of view. His remarks also come in the midst of soaring energy prices in Europe.
Not long ago, the operator of the RTE electricity network presented a long-awaited report on the electricity future of France, which notably underlined the economic advantage of building new reactors but also the need to make quick decisions.
This publication had prompted the executive to accelerate its timetable, while decisions on nuclear power had until then been postponed until after the start of Flamanville – expected for the end of 2022, therefore during the next five-year term.
EDF, which has implemented an improvement plan after the excesses of the Flamanville site, still assured Monday that the sector would be “ready” and could deliver new EPRs on time and on schedule.
In addition to the industrial challenge, the Court of Auditors underlined last year the “major” financial stake of such a program, quantifying the construction cost of six new generation EPRs (EPR2) at 46 billion euros (66 billion Canadian dollars).
“Announcing a revival of nuclear power and the construction of new reactors while the nuclear industry is chaining up fiascos is completely disconnected from reality”, for his part judged Nicolas Nace, from the NGO Greenpeace, who speaks of “democratic denial” .