For Agnès Pannier-Runacher, we will have to do more in the nuclear revival strategy. In an interview with the Tribune Sundaya few weeks before the presentation of the bill relating to energy sovereignty, the Minister of Energy Transition believes that France will have to go “beyond the first six EPRs” already announced.
Since the Belfort speech of February 2022, in which Emmanuel Macron announced the relaunch of nuclear power, the government has implemented a program for six new EPR reactors and eight as an option. The Head of State had already opened the door in December to an announcement on these eight additional reactors “in the coming months”.
“The historic park will not be eternal”
The minister thus drives the point home, almost a month after this release: “We need nuclear power beyond the first six EPRs since the historic park will not be eternal,” she declared to the weekly, according to which the text which will be presented to the Council of Ministers acknowledges these eight reactors but does not give precise objectives for the development of renewable energies by 2030.
The wording of the text “remains technologically neutral”, further assures Agnès Pannier-Runacher, according to whom, to reduce the share of fossil fuels in the energy mix in France from more than 60% to 40% in 2035, “it is necessary intends to undertake, after 2026, “additional constructions representing 13 gigawatts”. A power which corresponds “to the power of eight EPRs, without setting this or that technology in stone”, affirms the minister.
However, the text “breaks with the previous programming law, which reduced the share of nuclear power in the electricity mix to 50% by 2025”, indicates the minister who has not closed the door to going further further, qualifying an objective beyond these 14 EPRs as a “good subject for discussion with parliamentarians”.
Measures for “price regulation”
Among the other measures included in this bill, the minister mentions two sections devoted to “price regulation” and “consumer protection”, which notably provide for the obligation for suppliers to “transmit a monthly schedule and a annual estimate for each contract change”, as well as faster sanctions for “rogue suppliers”.
Furthermore, she indicates that the question of nuclear fuel recycling infrastructure would be on the menu of the next Nuclear Policy Council (CPN), scheduled for January, not excluding “building new capacities”.