Invited on France inter this Tuesday morning, the Minister of Ecology was cooked on the nuclear issue.

Barbara Pompili notably gave the latest information on the situation of an EPR reactor of a Chinese nuclear power plant built with the EDF group, currently under surveillance after an increase in “rare gases”.

“We received information from EDF on what is happening in the Taichan reactor.

All this is managed by the Chinese authorities, but what we have as information is that there is indeed a gas leak in the primary circuit of reactor number 1 ”.

The minister wanted to be reassuring by specifying that this leak remained "below the safety thresholds".

Except that these famous safety thresholds have been reassessed by China and are three times higher than those established by France.

Here again, Barbara Pompili minimized by specifying "that after Fukushima and Chernobyl, we have safety rules which have been greatly increased everywhere in the world, and that no country is playing with the safety of nuclear installations".

"The advantage of nuclear power is that it is carbon free"

For the Minister, this incident should encourage the State to reflect on its energy policy, while nuclear currently represents more than 70% of the electricity produced in France.

"Obviously, we have it now and we still have it for years", tempered the minister who wants "concrete solutions" to be found "and not long phrases".

However, the miracle solution does not exist.

“The advantage of nuclear power is that it is carbon-free, it has other drawbacks, particularly in matters of safety or the waste to be managed.

Other energies, such as renewable energies, have other problems: their intermittence or questions of acceptability.

"

Do not miss the boat of offshore wind

Asked then about French investment in renewable energy sectors, Barbara Pompili admits that France has "missed the boat for too many years". The Minister does not wish to reproduce this error, in particular with offshore wind power. “There is a factory in Le Havre, there will also be one in Brest. We have to install a sector everywhere, because I'm fed up with being behind on these energies, which according to the International Energy Agency will represent 90% of electricity production. We cannot be left behind on this, ”she said.

Regarding wind power also, she returned to the feeling of encirclement that some French people may have and recently denounced by Stéphane Bern.

“I'm the first to admit that there are places where it didn't go the way it should.

This is why I asked the prefects to make a circular to make a map of the places where we can put wind turbines according to the territories.

Then, the objectives at the national level will be broken down by region.

»Currently, wind turbines account for 8% of electricity production in France and the government plans to increase it to 15%,

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