The awakening is brutal. French households lived in the sweet illusion that the cheap electricity produced by EDF’s nuclear power stations would protect them from the turbulence caused by the war in Ukraine on energy supplies. It was even an opportunity to show the superiority of the French model, based on national sovereignty, as opposed to our German neighbors, who had staked everything on Russian gas. But nothing went as planned.
The shutdown of 26 nuclear reactors out of 56 in the EDF fleet makes France vulnerable to power shortages and places the operator at the heart of criticism. One of the first missions of the future boss of the operator, Luc Rémont, chosen by the Elysée on Thursday, September 29, will be to relaunch production. In 2005, the year of its IPO, EDF produced around 430 terawatt hours of electricity (TWh) of nuclear origin; in 2022, it expects 280 to 300 TWh. This industrial snub adds to the setbacks suffered by the French nuclear industry to build new third-generation power plants (EPR).
Who to blame? The leaders of EDF or those of Areva – the failing enemy brother –, the executive, the ecologists, or Brussels and its disheveled liberalism? Communists and Republicans are calling for the opening of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into nuclear power to shed light on this disaster. While it is enough to have read Agatha Christie: “EDF is The crime of the Orient Express. Everyone is guilty”slice a former Bercy who wished to remain anonymous, like most of the great witnesses solicited.
The coins of environmentalists
For Olivier Marleix, president of the Les Républicains group in the National Assembly, the main culprit is François Hollande, who promised, with a view to his election as President of the Republic in 2012, reduce the share of nuclear power in electricity production from 75% to 50% by 2025. “We have a golden technology, which provided us with clean and cheap energy, we sacrificed it in the name of an electoral agreement Socialist Party [PS]-The Greens in 2011: the exchange of fifteen legislative constituencies against the closure of twenty-four nuclear reactors”attacked Mr. Marleix, in a daily interview Le Figaropublished on September 5.
Everywhere in Europe, since the end of the XXe century, ecologists have monetized their participation in coalitions in exchange for an exit from nuclear power: this was the case in Germany in 1998, or in Belgium in 2003. In 1997, already, the Prime Minister (PS), Lionel Jospin, had sacrificed the Superphenix fast breeder reactor on the altar of a PS-Les Verts agreement. In France, the Greens have slowed down the development of “new nuclear” with all the more efficiency since energy policy was for a long time entrusted to the Ministry of the Environment.
You have 76.68% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.