The Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, announced on Friday the relocation 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
", declared the Minister by aiming for the immense forge of the nuclear leader, one of the few in the world capable of producing the large-scale parts essential to nuclear power plants.
The new workshop, which will require 100 million euros of investment by 2026, will be installed in the historic building of Le Creusot where the French nuclear program was launched in the 1970s, quite a 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 which allow, inside a nuclear vessel, to guide fuel rods.
"
It's a return
" to France, we welcome at Framatome.
"
We cannot depend on others to make 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. 'East.
“
It is an issue of national sovereignty
”, added Agnès Pannier-Runacher, announcing that this relocation would be followed by others.
“
France is reconnecting with its nuclear industrial destiny
,” assured the minister after having witnessed the forging, on a gigantic 9,000-tonne press, of an incandescent part heated to more than 1,100 degrees.
A "little pebble" towards the revival of nuclear power
The internals manufactured in the new workshop, creating a hundred jobs, will be used for the construction of future EPR2s, “
at a rate of 1.5 per year
”.
The first deliveries will be made "
mid-year 2026
", i.e. in time for the delivery of the next six EPR2s, the first entry into service of which should take place by 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 crises and which should enable France to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Agnès Pannier-Runacher rejected criticism of a forced passage of this recovery policy while the nuclear acceleration bill has still not been approved by Parliament.
It will be debated in the National Assembly from March 13, after being easily voted on by the Senate in January.
“
We are getting ready
”, simply declared the minister.
