President Emmanuel Macron denounced on Monday, without naming him, the
"unacceptable"
remarks of the current CEO of EDF, Jean-Bernard Lévy, who had been very critical of the State's strategy for the French nuclear fleet. a few weeks before his departure.
“It is absolutely unacceptable that the people who had the responsibility for the maintenance work of the park
(explain)
today that we did not take our responsibilities, because from the first months of my first mandate we gave back visibility in the sector”
, denounced Emmanuel Macron in front of the press, while more than half of the French nuclear reactors are stopped for maintenance, in particular for a significant corrosion problem.
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"I'm just going to tell you that the maintenance work, if it had just been done correctly on the rest of the park, we wouldn't even be having this discussion today
," he continued, assuring that the decision the closure of the Fessenheim site,
"the oldest plant
" in the nuclear fleet, was not
"a subject"
.
“Everyone must take responsibility;
for my part, I took them (...).
The maintenance work on the existing fleet is in no way conditional on the creation, the decision of new nuclear reactors that I took at the end of my
(first)
mandate (...) What I heard in the public debate these weeks is unacceptable because it is wrong and irresponsible"
, he added.
"
A welder, a pipefitter, it takes two to three years to train
"
Without naming him, the president in any case targeted Jean-Bernard Lévy, whose names of successors to the presidency and to the general management of EDF are not yet known but are expected soon.
The latter had criticized, during the Meetings of French entrepreneurs of the Medef, at the end of August, the lack of a long-term strategic vision of the State on nuclear power.
"We don't have any problems of expertise, the skills, the experts, we have them (...) We have a lot of projects in parallel and in a way, we lack manpower, because we don't there are not enough trained teams (…) A welder, a pipe fitter, it takes two to three years to train him”
, he had developed.
“And why don't we have enough trained teams?
Because we have been told that the nuclear fleet will decline, “prepare to close power plants”
, he assured.