the TRICASTIN nuclear power plant in the drome – Mourad ALLILI / SIPA
New article for a new debate. During the first reading of the climate bill on Friday, the Senate added an article that conditions the shutdown of nuclear reactors and the closure of power plants to the implementation of equivalent renewable and low-carbon energy production. .
The provision is debated and it is not impossible that it does not pass through the Assembly. Among her detractors, the Minister of Ecological Transition Barbara Pompili who strongly opposed “an article neither done nor to be done”. “I wish it was that simple!” “She exclaimed, stressing that” energy policy is much more complex than that “. The minister also insisted on the “essential” question of nuclear safety.
Avoid a blackout this winter
“It’s only to provide security. We cannot imagine closing a reactor, if we do not have a capacity for new renewable energies, ”explained Daniel Gremillet, LR reporter of the text, for whom this measure aims to“ reinforce the objective of decarbonization of the text ”, while securing the supply of electrical energy. “This winter we all know we played with fire,” he noted. Barbara Pompili said electricity imports “increased by 22%” in 2020 compared to 2019.
“This article is the seat belt,” insisted LR president of the Economic Affairs Committee Sophie Primas. “There are not those who want nuclear at all, those who want renewable at all, there are simply elected representatives of the Republic in this hemicycle who want us not to be in a blackout”.
“French illusion”
The right-wing majority Senate adopted an amendment specifying in its mechanism the need to comply with nuclear safety rules. “We will not be able – except to take decade by decade and year by year more and more risks – to keep the current stock of nuclear power stations, it is a French illusion”, warned the ecologist Ronan Dantec.
The share of nuclear power, which currently represents 70% of the French energy mix, should only represent 50% in 2035.