Emmanuel Macron will be in Belfort this Thursday, for a trip dedicated to the French energy strategy.
It should detail "the future French nuclear program", briefly mentioned on November 9th.
In this context, it should announce the number of EPR reactors that it intends to launch in France in the years to come.
Six as EDF hopes or even more?
The challenge is both to move towards the 2050 objective of carbon neutrality, but also to give the necessary visibility to the French nuclear industry to relaunch … and recruit, indicates the Elysée.
For its part, Greenpeace denounces a denial of democracy.
Will Emmanuel Macron act on six new EPR-type reactors, as EDF wishes and to whom the government had asked to work on this hypothesis?
Perhaps even more,
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table ?
It will be necessary to wait until 3:15 p.m. this Thursday and Emmanuel Macron's speech from Belfort, to have the answer to this question.
The Elysée leaves the scoop to the President of the Republic "to announce the sizing of the future nuclear program", it is specified, this Wednesday at the end of the morning, during a press brief on this trip to Belfortain.
Clarifying the November 9 speech
But who says future program, therefore says new reactors.
It is not a surprise.
"We are going, for the first time in decades, to relaunch the construction of nuclear reactors in our country," Emmanuel Macron had already announced on November 9 during a presidential address.
“It is this speech that he must clarify in Belfort, indicates the Elysée, making it clear that Emmanuel Macron's speech will not only address the atom, “but will aim to give a vision on the France's energy policy up to 2050”.
On this horizon, the objective is to achieve carbon neutrality, a stage at which the country would not emit more CO2 per year than it is capable of removing from the atmosphere.
A target that requires profound changes, "especially in the field of energy where two thirds of what we consume today is of fossil origin", recalls an adviser to Emmanuel Macron.
Anticipating the retirement of reactors
The vision that Emmanuel Macron must present revolves around three priorities, unfolds the Elysée: reducing our energy consumption, widely and immediately developing renewable energies (solar, wind, etc.) and, finally, ensuring that the nuclear park continues to constitute a base [of electricity production] complementary to the ENR.
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Fifty-six reactors, divided between eighteen power plants, now make up the French nuclear fleet.
More than three quarters will have reached the age of 60 in 2050, the age until which EDF and RTE push for their use.
And "the dynamics of nuclear decline would be particularly brutal from 2039 with an average shutdown of 4 Gwe / year until 2050", recalled the French Nuclear Energy Company (Sfen), French nuclear lobby, in a note from April 2019.
The right timing?
It is therefore to these predictable reactor closures that this new nuclear program intends to respond.
The right timing a few months before the presidential election?
This is the first criticism made by Greenpeace, an NGO historically opposed to nuclear power.
“No matter how much he will do to suggest the opposite, acknowledging the construction of new reactors today is an opportunistic promise from a candidate and not from a president, is convinced Nicolas Nace, “Energy Transition” campaign manager at Greenpeace. .
He tries to grab votes from the right and the extreme right and then participates in the outbidding of candidates, in recent days, on nuclear power.
From Fabien Roussel [Communist Party candidate] who announces between six and eight new EPRs, to Eric Zemmour who wants fourteen.
»
Nicolas Nace castigates a “denial of democracy”.
"The construction of new reactors commits us for decades and yet we have had no substantive debate upstream on this choice of society", he laments.
Nicolas Goldberg, “energy” expert at Colombus Consulting, nuance for his part: “We are very far from a decision taken alone in his corner by Emmanuel Macron, he believes.
The announcement of new reactors expected this Thursday will trigger a process that will include the seizure of the National Commission for Public Debate (CNDP).
And if it validates this relaunch of nuclear power, EDF will have to submit a request for authorization to create a nuclear installation to the Ministry of Ecological Transition.
The latter will then ask the Nuclear Safety Authority to investigate this request.
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, on November 10.
“If we want to launch the first projects in the next five-year period, now is the time to make a decision, summarizes Nicolas Goldberg.
Even in its most optimistic schedule, EDF does not plan to lay the first concrete before 2027*.
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The promise of less chaotic construction sites than in Flamanville?
These six new reactors that EDF is hoping for – three pairs of two reactors – would be built on existing power plants.
Nor is the idea to launch these six projects at the same time, but to have them follow one another.
"Leaving 18 months between two reactors of the same pair and four years between two pairs", continues Nicolas Goldberg.
With expected commissioning from 2035, if all goes without a hitch.
An unlikely scenario when the construction of the Flamanville EPR, which began in 2007, is one delay after another?
Its commissioning initially planned for 2012 is not expected before the spring of 2023, henceforth.
As for its cost, it went from 3.4 to 12.7 billion euros.
That was EDF's promise at the time: to take advantage of feedback from this first Flamanville EPR to have less chaotic future worksites… Less costly too.
"EDF's costing, which can serve as a basis for discussion, is around fifty billion euros for the six nuclear reactors", indicates the Elysée Palace, adding that the results of audits to assess the strength of this estimate will be made public in the coming days.
Convince young graduates that nuclear power has a future
These constructions in pairs and which are linked together must precisely help to make economies of scale, but also to give visibility to the nuclear sector allowing it to train and keep qualified personnel, we explain at the Elysée.
One last point far from being anecdotal, as several reports point to the causes of the difficulties encountered on the Flamanville EPR as "a loss of generalized competence" in the French nuclear industry, for lack of projects launched between 1990 and 2007. also the purpose of this new program, we launch in the entourage of Emmanuel Macron.
Convince young graduates that nuclear is an industry with a future.
»
Nicolas Nace doubts this and recalls that this relaunch of nuclear power planned by the government is part of a very difficult context for the atom.
EDF has again lowered its nuclear production forecast for 2022 in France.
It could reach its lowest level for 30 years.
"As for the EPR, it's not just a fiasco in Flamanville," said the Greenpeace campaign manager.
One of the two Thaishan EPR reactors [the first in the world to be commissioned] has been shut down since this summer and the discovery of a radioactive leak in the primary circuit.
The questions are not all raised on this incident to date… ”
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* "Excluding administrative simplification which could shorten these deadlines but which would then require legislation", specifies Nicolas Goldberg.
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