The Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, announced this Friday the transfer to France by Framatome of an essential stage in the manufacture of nuclear tanks, a new brand of support for a sector that President Emmanuel Macron wants to relaunch .
“A new Framatome industrial workshop will be built here in Le Creusot” (Saône-et-Loire), on the Framatome site, and “will allow the relocation of high-precision parts previously manufactured in Eastern Europe”, the Minister declared to the aim for the immense forge of the nuclear leader, one of the few in the world capable of producing on a large scale the essential parts for nuclear power plants.
“Cradle of French metallurgy”
The new workshop, which will require an investment of 100 million euros until 2026, will be installed in the historic Le Creusot building where the French nuclear program was launched in the 1970s, a true symbol. In this “cradle of French metallurgy” -Le Creusot housed one of the first forges in the world, in 1782-, the workshop will make it possible to manufacture the stainless steel internals that allow, inside a nuclear vessel, to guide the fuel rods . “It’s a return” to France, we welcome you at Framatome. “We cannot depend on others to manufacture such a critical part,” argues the Ministry of Energy Transition, without wanting to comment on the probable additional cost of manufacturing these parts in France compared to Eastern Europe.
“France is rediscovering its nuclear industrial destiny,” said the minister after having witnessed the forging, on a gigantic 9,000-ton press, of an incandescent piece heated to more than 1,100 degrees.
First deliveries of interns in mid-2026
The internals manufactured in the new workshop, which will create a hundred jobs, will be used for the construction of future EPR2, “at a rate of 1.5 per year”. The first deliveries will take place “in mid-2026”, that is, in time for the delivery of the next six EPR2s, the first entry into service of which should take place in 2035. This new workshop is a “small pebble” in the vast project launched by President Emmanuel Macron in the face of the energy and climate crisis and which should enable France to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
Agnès Pannier-Runacher rejected the criticism of a forced approval of this recovery policy while the nuclear acceleration bill has not yet been approved by Parliament. It will be debated in the National Assembly starting March 13, after being easily voted on by the Senate in January. “We are preparing,” the minister limited himself to declaring.
Source: BFM TV
