The Government presents this Wednesday in the Council of Ministers its bill aimed at accelerating the construction of new nuclear reactors, just when the public debate on the place of the atom in France is just beginning.
As the need for electricity will grow to allow the country to move away from fossil fuels, President Emmanuel Macron supports the construction of six new generation EPR reactors, with an option for another eight, with the parallel development of renewable energies, solar and wind. Marine. power first.
A bill to accelerate renewables, whose deployment is notoriously late, is also due to be examined by the Senate from Wednesday.
On the same day, a text on nuclear energy arrives at the Council of Ministers, to be examined in early 2023, first in the National Assembly, indicated the Ministry of Energy Transition.
“If we want to be both energy independent and meet our climate goals, we must replace fossil fuels with low-carbon energy. Nuclear energy is today the energy with the least carbon of all the solutions we have”, Minister Agnès Pannier justified on Friday. -Runacher, at the Chinon power plant (Indre-et-Loire).
“Gain time”
Installed on the sites of existing power plants, the future EPRs would be located, for the first two, in Penly (Seine-Maritime) and then in Gravelines (North). The location of the third pair of reactors is not decided, considering the Rhone Valley (Bugey or Tricastin).
The bill presented on Wednesday aims to “save time” by simplifying administrative procedures: for example, sites would be exempt from building permits because state services would carry out compliance control. And the works in buildings not destined to receive radioactive substances can be carried out before closing the public consultation.
Emmanuel Macron could thus lay the first stone before the end of his term in 2027, even if the launch of this first EPR could not be done before 2035 or even 2037.
France, which relies on nuclear power for about 70% of its electricity, decided in 2015 to diversify its supply sources by shutting down 14 of its 58 reactors (two have already closed), in a change announced by the president at the end of 2021.
In a mandatory consultation for an opinion, the National Council for the Ecological Transition (CNTE), which brings together unions, businessmen and NGOs, “regretted the lack of time” that it has been given to rule on this bill. The CNTE also points out that this text “cannot prejudge the conclusions of the public debate.”
public debates
This bill “does not take precedence over ongoing consultations or future climate and energy laws that will decide” in fine, the ministry said Monday.
In fact, parliamentarians will have to vote from the second half of 2023 on France’s energy and climate strategy.
Until then, the French will be able to express themselves, during a public debate on the construction of the six EPRs, and another broader consultation on energy, organized by the government until December 31, notably online (concertation-energie.gouv.fr ).
These two processes could be based on the 2050 scenarios of the network manager RTE and Ademe. All of these scenarios include an increase in renewable energy, with a variable proportion of nuclear energy (or no nuclear energy, which, however, would require very proactive sobriety measures).
Source: BFM TV
