After years of debate that have made its closure a sea serpent of French political life, the reactor No. 1 of the Fessenheim nuclear power plant must be definitively shut down on Saturday, the first step on the long road to dismantling. The decree confirming the total and final shutdown of the reactors of the dean of the French power plants before the end of June 2020 was signed by the government which welcomed on Wednesday a "first step in the energy strategy of France".
The decree, initialed Tuesday by Edouard Philippe and the Minister of Ecological Transition Elisabeth Borne and published Wednesday in the Official Journal , "comes into force on February 22, 2020 for the N.1 reactor and on June 30, 2020 for the N.2 reactor" . It "repeals the authorization to operate the Fessenheim nuclear power station owned by EDF".
Commissioned in 1977
"This event, announced and repeatedly postponed by previous governments, (...) constitutes a first step in France's energy strategy, which aims to gradually rebalance between nuclear electricity and original electricity renewable while continuing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electricity production thanks to the closure of coal-fired power plants by 2022, ”said Matignon in a press release.
The deputy LR of Haut-Rhin Raphaël Schellenberger, president of a fact-finding mission on the follow-up of the closing of the site, however estimated Tuesday that the State was "not with go" and alerted on " consequences for the territory ”. With the shutdown of the plant, Raphaël Schellenberger also pointed to the elimination of "more than 2,000 jobs" direct or indirect, the impact on businesses or real estate.
Commissioned in 1977, the dean of the French power plants in operation will have known six presidents of the Republic, from Valéry Giscard d'Estaing to Emmanuel Macron, via François Hollande, who sealed his fate by promising to close it in 2011, but also hunger strikes and countless demonstrations by opponents.
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