EDF, the French electricity utility, is connecting this week the Flamanville EPR nuclear reactor to the grid. That good news, yet, is accompanied by the usual negative comments regarding the exceptional length of the works (a 12 years delay) and the construction huge cost overruns (10 billion). If these points are undisputable, they must not mask another very positive reality for France which so has reestablished its capacity to build nuclear power plants. This one had been seriously affected by several major strategic mistakes.

There was first the refusal, at the end of the Nineties, by the successive governments to launch the construction of this new model which had been yet certified by the Nuclear Safety Authority. Between the last order, the Civaux nuclear power plant in 1992, and the decision to launch the construction of the EPR in 2006, there has been near fifteen years during which we attend a major loss of know-how with the retirement and more frequently the reconversion toward other activities of the qualified workforce;

There has been, from 2012 and especially in 2017, very questionable political choices with the closure of the Fessenheim power plant and the project to bring back the share of the nuclear production in the power mix to 50%, when it was traditionally around 70%. That clearly meant that no more plants would be ordered before a very long period and that the enterprises in that sector and their workforce would retrain, making more serious the loss of know-how.

The European political environment was very hostile, with the pressures exercised by Angela Merkel government to exclude any privileged financing for the nuclear plants to realize the energy transition. She was answering to the demands of her coalition which included ecologists and of the electors of the lander where were located the coal mines. Everything has changed since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The sanctions imposing a reduction of the imports of Russian natural gas have generated in Germany a major energy crisis which had repercussions on the prices of electricity and of natural gas in the whole Europe and increased the inflationist wave created by the international tensions.

In the same time, France knew a heavy supply problem with the apparition in near half of the nuclear power plants of a corrosion phenomenon imposing the stoppage of many of them. The production has so fallen in October 2022 by 30% compared to the previous year. The stoppage of the affected plants has been compensated by the increase of the thermal production from 48 to 67 TWh during the year and mainly by the reversal of the electricity foreign exchanges. From exporting 50 TWh in 2021, France has become an importer in 2022 of 13 TWh. That situation had been accompanied by a strong increase of the prices which has been passed to the household. In two years, the regulated tariff has increased by 70% and the State has had to intervene in suppressing some taxes to attenuate its consequences on household and on enterprises.

That crisis had yet the merit to reveal to the government, which seemed to have forgotten it, the strategic character of the nuclear production for the French economy as for the household purchasing power. This one has so completely reversed its policy. Instead of forecasting a diminution of the production, it has then asked EDF to launch the construction of 6 new EPR and to forecast a second lot of another 6 ones.

That turnaround is also coming from a noticing that: wind farms and solar panels have not been and won’t be in the future able to guarantee the power supply for two reasons. It will not be possible to build the necessary capacities and mainly these ones will suffer from a double weakness, intermittency and the localization of the production sources. They will not always deliver when and where power will be needed. Plants able to produce at any moment will always be necessary. Regarding the grid, it has not been conceived to link consumption points to so dispersed wind farms and solar panels.

Figures regarding 2024 nine first months confirm the back to normal and to its positive effects. Nuclear production has reached 263 TWh against 233 in 2023 and 209 in 2022. It is coming closer to the 2021 peak of 269 TWh. Consumption having less increased, the trade surplus has beaten a record with 67.1 TWh, i.e. a contribution to the trade balance of 3.3 billion. As usual, when there is good news, that surplus has been denounced and have been criticized the “overcapacities” of the nuclear production.

The nuclear revival is not limited to France. Several European countries have announced, like Italy, that they were going to open thoughts about the construction of plants but the turnaround which could be the most significant is the German one. The new CDU leader who has succeeded to Angela Merkel, Freederich Merz, and who could become the next Chancellor after the elections at the Bundestag in February, has clearly let to know that he will break with the past energy policy which has leaded to a major crisis, will reconsider the position of his country regarding nuclear and even will consider the construction of new plants.

The consequences, on European issues, could be significant. Financings dedicated to the energetic transition could become more important and assigned to nuclear. Today, it is just a shy and theoretic possibility, after having been for a long time, excluded. Especially, it would be possible to proceed to a reform of the European electricity markets which systematically hurt the nuclear production whose benefits are qualified as an unearned income and must be shared with these which only sale it without having taken the risks to produce it. We could even imagine a European power pact, as what has been done for the euro. Electricity is, as a currency, an essential good which must be shared. The country which would profit from the access to the market, would take engagements regarding the reduction of the greenhouse gas emissions, the evolution of its fossil fuels consumption and its energetic independence. France would profit from this new regulation framework offering to its enterprises and to its household a safe supply and a competitive energy.

The examination of the power mix also shows the role of the hydraulic production. It is the ideal source of energy because it is de-carbonized, able to be stocked and manageable. But we never talk about it because it has needed, during the construction of the dams, measures sometimes authoritarian about nature and population moves. To build one today would be unimaginable due to multiple regulation constraints and mainly to the dissents, which would go much farer than these from riverside residents, in the name of environment. It is enough to observe the hostility generated by the construction of pools to stock water in order to regulate rivers flows or simply the supply of agricultural productions, to be convince of that.

The accomplished path to lead to the nuclear revival shows to which point measures taken in the name of the protection of the environment can have harming effects and provoke situations which are at the opposite of the searched objectives. Germany gives an eloquent example of that. France must take from it all the lessons and the new orientations in favor of the nuclear energy production must be durably included in its energy policy.