The rapid rise of oil and natural gas prices following the sanctions against Russia after the Ukraine invasion has started in Europe an unprecedented inflationist wave for 40 years and the second oil crisis. The limits of renewables have been noted because their intermittent character makes the availability of power production capacities always indispensable. In France, the delays in the putting into production of the Flamanville EPR and of the achievements of the maintenance operations after the Covid-19 pandemic along with the outbreak of corrosion phenomenon have provoked a 30% fall of the nuclear power production and have compelled the country to become an electricity importer at the worst time when its price due to the European regulation was pegged to the natural gas one.
The lesson of this very costly episode for the public finances, because the State had to put in place tariffs protections is that the nuclear energy is indispensable to supply safety and to the country financial stability. The power production fall which occurred comes from two major strategic mistakes it is important to have identified in order, if we want to catch up with the lost time, not to making them again.
After having noticed the failure of the Creys-Malleville nuclear surgenerator in 1998, the government has not decided that an EPR, which had been certified by the Nuclear Safety Authority, had to be ordered. It will be necessary to wait for more than ten years that the building site starts in Flamanville. To cope with the fall of its activity, Framatome had no other choice than to take the order of a nuclear power plant in Finland, but it did not have at its disposal the know-how. To produce and to deliver a nuclear reactor is one thing, to manage the works of a power plant is quite another one. It is not because you know how to make an engine that you are able to produce the car.
The second strategic mistake occurred when it has been decided to reduce the share of the nuclear power production until 50%. Any project of a new power plant was abandoned and the maintenance and increased life duration works on the existing plants were slowed, contributing to the disaffection of the employees facing the scheduled decline of their jobs. The current fall of the nuclear power production is the direct consequence of that and has at its origin the difficulties, for the industrial supply chain, to have at their disposal technical teams having preserved the indisputable know-hows to the achievement of the works. No industrial activity can stay unscathed in such an environment.
The lesson has been taken and the State has entrusted to EDF the mission to launch an ambitious construction program of new nuclear power plants. But there is an urgency and in order the objective will be reached, several conditions must be met. The first one and maybe the most important is the return of the trust and the recognition that the nuclear mode of production is again an industry for the future. The State must firmly commit itself and without any ambiguity and it will have the support of the majority of the French people who considers that this power production mode now presents more advantages than drawbacks after the current financial drifts.
It must also take off any doubt on the choice of the reactor model. It will be the improved version of the EPR, the EPR2. To do that, the idea of a recourse to the “small reactors” which had been evocated must be abandoned. This solution is unsuited because we do not have at out disposal certified models and because to reach the necessary capacities, it would have to build five or six times more reactors and to choose new sites, which is not compatible with the situation of the network and would create local acceptability problems. The choice of the EPR2, into which have been introduced the necessary modifications taken from the experience of the construction of the first EPRs, allows to the contrary to winning time and to guaranteeing a reduction of the costs.
The determination put forward by the State will create a true motivation in the enterprises which will realize the works as inside the teams of technicians. The bill, which has just been approved by the Council of Ministers, is a first signal but, in the Parliament, it will be necessary to refuse eventual amendments of the text which would put into question the objectives of procedures simplification and, each time it will be possible, to fix time limits to these ones.
EDF has already thought to the sites which will receive the new reactor, Penly, Gravelines and Bugey. It is so necessary, regarding the first one, Penly, to proceed to the preliminary studies without waiting for the end of the adoption of the new regulations, in order to be ready, as soon they are adopted, and to open prior consultations with the competent local authorities which will give, once time has come, the authorizations. These discussions will have to be made public in order, once again, to show the determination of the plant operator to achieve the project in the best period.
In the same time, a large consultation with the nuclear supply chain enterprises must be launched, always with the same objective, which is to convince them that the turnaround announced by the President of the Republic at Belfort, has come into its execution phase and that time has come for them to be prepared to receive new and very important orders, in a first time, in Penly. They must so proceed to logistic studies and to study the realization of the investments at proximity of the site which will be necessary to achieve the works which will be given to them. They must at last be prepared to launch a vast formation and hiring campaign.
One of the reasons, if not the main one, of the difficulties occurred on the Flamanville building site of the EPR was laying in the losses of know-how during the decades when has been noticed the fall of the construction activity. Very specialized technical jobs, necessary to the realization of works like boiler making, soldering, system of taps or again concrete pouring had lost most of their employees. A massive effort of hiring and of formation must be launched without delay but it will only be successful if the State know how to convince the enterprises they have growth prospects for these activities and the related employees that these jobs are future jobs and that they can find carriers opportunities there coming up to their expectations.
The nuclear rebound and the acceleration of the investments are so technically and economically possible to the condition that a general mobilization starts inside the related enterprises, local authorities and administrations.
In politics, communication has frequently come before and even sometimes has substituted itself to action, which then, has been limited to announcements effects. The catching up in the nuclear power sector, necessary to give back to France its supply safety with competitive costs and to allow to fulfilling its commitments regarding the reduction of its greenhouse gas emissions will only be successful if this logic is reversed. This time it is the communication which will have to be at the service of the action and to succeed to convince French people that this energy policy is well founded and especially the economic agents, enterprises as employees, that through an implication in the new project, they can be confident about their future.