It had become quiet in recent years about France's once heavily criticized and praised nuclear industry. It seemed as if the flagship industry that had once attracted worldwide attention would take care of itself over time - through loss-making large corporations, restrictive laws and competition from renewable energies. The few new construction projects that came up got out of hand financially and in terms of construction time.
With the decline of the French nuclear alternative, Germany's energy transition seemed to be confirmed in spite of all coal contamination. But now that: "The nuclear issue is about to widen an ever wider gap between France and Germany and within Europe," warned Jens Althoff, head of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Paris. The occasion was the publication of an annual report on the state of the global nuclear industry (WNISR, World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2019) in the French capital at the end of December.
The background to Althoff's wake-up call are new plans by the French government for the construction of new nuclear power plants, which have so far hardly been discussed in public.
In September, the French finance and economy minister Bruno Le Maire and his colleague Elisabeth Borne, the French minister for the environment, wrote to the head of the French electricity company EDF, Jean Bernard Lévy, in an internal, leaked letter. Ministers urged Lévy to take all precautions to enable EDF to put six new nuclear power plants into operation in France by 2021. EDF is owned by the state with over 80 percent of its shares and is the operator of all 58 currently operational nuclear reactors in France, most of which are nearing the end of their 40-year operating period. The minister's letter was an order. And the message was: France continues to rely on nuclear power.
All signs previously spoke against it. It was not until 2015 that the Paris National Assembly passed a new energy law that promised to reduce the share of atomic energy in French electricity consumption from over 70 percent to 50 percent by 2025. Under President Emmanuel Macron, the parliament extended the transition period until 2035 because EDF expects to be able to operate reactors 10 to 20 years longer than their planned term. At the same time, the construction of new reactors was blocked. The reason: The so-called European Pressurized Reactor (EPR, European Pressurized Reactor), which was already planned as a Franco-German project at the end of the 1990s, is not yet operational in Europe.
JULIEN WARNAND / EPA-EFE / REX
President Macron: France sees nuclear technology as a guarantee of size and power
The construction of the first EPR began in 2005 on the Finnish Baltic coast and continues to this day, its construction costs have now multiplied. The German Siemens group got out halfway as the client. The French Areva Group was solely responsible for this, which soon reported major losses. It could only be saved through the takeover of EDF and billions from the French state. That was also due to the second EPR project that was planned in France in the village of Flamanville on the English Channel coast. The construction project, which started in 2009, was no better than in Finland. Originally estimated at 2.5 billion euros, the reactor is now expected to cost around 12 billion euros. Quality problems of the French suppliers who have not built a new reactor for decades explain a large part of the cost explosion.
New nuclear power plants - regardless of whether they make sense or not
Today EDF still does not know whether the EPR in Flamanville can be completed in 2021. Exactly this has been the prerequisite for the construction of new reactors. According to the letter from the ministers, is this condition now obsolete?
Yves Marignac, head of the nuclear-critical energy information service WISE-Paris (World Information Service on Energy) and member of the permanent expert group of the highest French atomic safety authority (ASN) gives three reasons to SPIEGEL why France cannot get away from the nuclear industry despite all the setbacks:
- EDF, Areva and Siemens had planned the construction and export of hundreds of EPR reactors in the nineties. But the model was not competitive on the world market. In France, the state then returned to full control of the nuclear industry. Other countries withdrew. British Energy, the UK's largest nuclear power plant operator, has been acquired by EDF. However, there was no change in energy policy, and wind and sun still only serve around eight percent of French electricity consumption.
- The French still see electricity as a public service that is the responsibility of the state. As a result, it can act as long as prices do not rise for consumers. EDF has meanwhile amassed a mountain of debt of over 30 billion euros, also because the group is allowed everything, except not to increase electricity prices. For this, the nuclear managers of EDF and the responsible ministries can make their energy policy decisions practically on their own.
- France still sees its own size and power guaranteed by its nuclear technology, and the citizens do not want to change that either. This includes not only the maintenance of nuclear weapons, but also the civilian nuclear industry. It is part of many foreign policy deals, such as when it comes to supplying the country with civilian nuclear energy, as in the case of Iran, so that it does not build nuclear weapons.
"No French government has wanted to shake this triple nuclear consensus," says Marignac. The logical consequence: France must build new nuclear power plants, regardless of whether this makes economic or climate policy sense or not.
Precisely before that, however, Foundation Director Althoff warned in Paris: "If France wants to solve its problems in the nuclear industry with European funds that are actually intended for the energy transition, how can Germany contribute more to the EU budget?" asked Althoff.
Not only a common energy policy, but also a common European climate policy, as the new EU Commission is aiming for in Brussels, is still a distant goal due to the French nuclear policy.
