The famous Alsatian nuclear power station must be shut down definitively overnight from Monday to Tuesday. A purely political decision, according to our editorial writer Nicolas Barré, managing editor of Les Echos. And, above all, an error at a time when renewable energies are not completely ready to take over. 

EDITORIAL

The moment is historic: it was tonight that the Fessenheim nuclear power plant, on the banks of the Rhine, will be definitively disconnected from the electricity network. And it's also a paradoxical moment. The opening of this plant had been decided by De Gaulle and Pompidou, and put into service under Giscard in 1977. It is now in perfect working order and contributes, like the other plants, to energy independence of our country. 

It is thanks to industrial achievements of this type that France is one of the best students in the world in terms of CO2 emissions. At a time when electric mobility is taking off and when the needs for the production of carbon-free energy are exploding, the Fessenheim judgment really appears for what it is: a purely political decision, taken by François Hollande to please environmentalists and that Emmanuel Macron did not have the courage to question.

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Follow the British example

Therefore, a problem could arise for the supply of electricity. RTE, the organization that manages the network, has had time to prepare but does not rule out cuts this winter. Fessenheim was also connected to the German and Swiss networks and exported a lot of electricity: in Germany, this nuclear electricity is today replaced by electricity produced with coal. And this is only the first ... I would add that after Fessenheim, France plans to shut down fourteen reactors in the coming years.

>> READ ALSO - In Germany, life goes on after the dismantling of power plants

Wind and solar are going to ramp up, it's a good thing, but we know that it's not enough. The example to follow is the United Kingdom: more than a single kilowatt produced with coal, renewable energies, notably offshore wind, have completely replaced it. But at the same time, the United Kingdom is building EPRs and investing massively in nuclear power. Why ? To manage intermittency, that is to say the moments when renewables do not produce: when there is no wind or no sun. If we want more renewable energy - it is desirable - nuclear energy is also needed. And Fessenheim should not be closed.