The French Parliament validates the revival of nuclear power

One of the cooling towers of the Cattenom nuclear power plant, in eastern France Lorraine, in September 2022. AP - Jean-Francois Badias

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The French Parliament definitively adopted on Tuesday the draft law to revive nuclear power in order to achieve President Emmanuel Macron's ambition to build six new EPR reactors by 2035.

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A week after broad support from the Senate, MPs voted 399-100 on the nuclear revival bill, with the right, far right and communists voting in favour. The ecologists and the radical left voted against it and the socialists abstained. The technical bill simplifies the process in order to achieve the ambition to build six new EPR reactors and launch studies for eight others. It is limited to new facilities located in France in or near existing nuclear sites.

In the wake of the Senate, parliamentarians lifted a "lock" introduced in 2015 under Socialist President François Hollande. The text thus removes the objective of a reduction to 50% of the share of nuclear energy in the French electricity mix by 2035, as well as the ceiling of 63.2 gigawatts of total authorized nuclear production capacity. At the same time, it toughens penalties for trespassing into power plants, with a penalty of one to two years in prison and a fine of 15,000 to 30,000 euros.

After fears of power cuts this winter against the backdrop of war in Ukraine, the French Minister of Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher praises a text "major to build the energy independence of our country", which will allow "to produce abundant, competitive and decarbonized energy". In the morning, it brought together in Paris about fifteen representatives of pro-nuclear European countries, in order to weigh in the "energy strategy" of the European Union.

« Frantic bludgeoning »

The network Sortir du nucléaire and the NGO Greenpeace France have "denounced the passage in force of the (French) government on a project to revive above-ground nuclear power in the face of the climate imperatives to which it claims to respond".

In the Assembly, ecologists and deputies of La France Insoumise (LFI) railed against the bill, insisting on the "dangerousness" of nuclear power and its "tons of waste". They are the only ones campaigning for an exit from the atom and the transition to 100% renewable energies from 2045.

Green MP Julie Laernoes denounced the "frantic bludgeoning to make the population forget the dangers of nuclear power and its technological and financial setbacks". But twelve years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, French environmentalists admit to having lost ground in their "cultural battle" against the atom, like polls that show growing support for nuclear power.

The right supports the text while criticizing Emmanuel Macron's "spectacular tête-à-queue" on the issue. The energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine has revived nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels, including Russian gas.

► Read also: The French nuclear industry recruits massively

(

With AFP)

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• France
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