France: public debate opens on nuclear power despite Macron's stated intentions
The Flamanville EPR site REUTERS / Benoit Tessier
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
What future for nuclear power in France?
This is the question posed to the French by the National Commission for Public Debate.
A debate that opened Thursday for four months on the country's energy future when Emmanuel Macron and EDF have already announced their intentions: to build six new EPRs, "new generation" reactors, to get out of fossil fuels and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. So what is this debate going to do?
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Do we need a new nuclear program?
Will EPR reactors be useful?
How much will it cost ?
Here are some of the ten questions that the National Commission for Public Debate (CNDP) will address until February 2023.
“
We have a platform that is open for all interventions, questions, answers, through the debate website.
Everyone can participate
,
”
explains Michel Badré, chairman of the commission responsible for organizing the debate, reached by telephone by
Baptiste Coulon
of the France department of RFI.
“
And all of this converging towards a public session open to everyone in which we deal with these questions
”, he continues
.
What is this debate for?
But Emmanuel Macron's intentions are already known, the President of the Republic wants to build
six new EPR reactors
.
He announced it in November 2021 during a televised address.
The first two would emerge in Penly, in Seine-Maritime.
Therefore, a question: what is the point of this debate?
►
To read also:
Nuclear energy in eight questions
To lay the foundations for a dialogue before the vote on a new energy-climate programming law in 2023, continues Michel Badré.
“
It is Parliament that must vote, the government and the President of the Republic do not have the possibility of authorizing a new nuclear installation because the current multi-annual energy program which dates from spring 2020 does not allow it. not”
.
Which makes Chantal Jouanno, president of the CNDP, say that “
the decision on France's energy choices has not yet been taken
”.
These debates come at a time when Parliament must vote on France's energy roadmap no later than 2024, when 70% of France's electricity comes from nuclear power and more than one in two reactors are currently on hold.
►
To read also:
Why is the revival of nuclear energy still uncertain?
(
And with
AFP)
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Energies
France
Nuclear