After years of protests, the Fessenheim nuclear power plant is shut down. However, this does not mean that France is leaving nuclear power.
- Fessenheim nuclear power plant is switched off
- The nuclear power plant is located in an earthquake zone
- Political gift from Emmanuel Macron
Fessenheim - On Saturday, February 22nd, at exactly 2.30 a.m., Electricité de France (EDF) stops the first of two 900-megawatt kilometers, the N.1, on the banks of the Rhine. Reactor N.2 will follow in four months, on June 30, as the French government announced in a decree on Wednesday. Then the oldest of 58 French nuclear power plants (nuclear power plants) will no longer produce electricity.
Finally !, the opponents of nuclear power plants on both sides of the Rhine mean. Why only? Asked many residents of the village of Fessenheim . The decision to close was highly political - groundbreaking and historic for some, nonsensical and climate-damaging for others. The fact is that the nuclear power plant, which went on line in 1977, is located in an earthquake zone that in the Middle Ages had once visited the city of Basel, 34 kilometers away. And it lies below the water line of the Rhine Canal, i.e. in a flood area. Especially on the German and Swiss side, there was great fear of a super meltdown .
Fessenheim: Macron is doing well with the Greens
Years of protests didn't help. Fessenheim has long paid for itself and supplies more electricity than ever. EDF therefore fought in Paris with all means to extend the runtime of its highly profitable plant. In 2012, President François Hollande announced in the election campaign that he wanted to reduce the atomic share of national electricity production from 75 to 50 percent by 2025. For this purpose, he promised to switch off the first Fessenheim, he promised.
When his term ended in 2017, however, there was still no closing date. Successor Emmanuel Macron found EDF with compensation of 434 million euros. The association "Sortir du nucléaire" ("Get out of nuclear power") even estimates it at four billion euros because of open enforcement clauses.
In the end, taxpayers pay for the decision, which is first and foremost an act of election policy for Macron: In order to cope with the Greens, he set the closure of the first Fessenheim reactor on February 22, three weeks before the French local elections.
Fessenheim: Greens welcome closure of course
The green party Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV) naturally welcomes the closure of Fessenheim. But she knows that this political gift does not mean France's exit from nuclear power, but at most a diversification. Or a "compensation", as Macron said on Wednesday. The president is a supporter of the "nucléaire", nuclear power; like Hollande, he promises to reduce the share of nuclear power to 50 percent - but not in 2025, but only in 2035. Then Macron will no longer rule in the Elysée.
In the meantime, EDF is even expected to build six new reactors. One of them, the novel pressurized water reactor EPR (European Pressurized Reactor), is currently being built in Flamanville in Normandy. The construction costs have tripled to 12.4 billion euros; Commissioning is continually postponed because the ASN nuclear safety authority is constantly finding new construction defects.
Flamanville is a double symbol - for the lost know-how of French nuclear engineers, who have not built reactors for decades, but also generally for the billion-dollar crisis in the French nuclear industry. For the first time since the 1960s, when Charles de Gaulle declared France's self-sufficiency in terms of energy policy thanks to his nuclear course, the majority of opponents of nuclear power in France are in the majority: 53 percent of the French spoke out in 2019 in a poll for the nuclear phase-out.
Dismantling of Fessenheim will take until 2040 according to the official schedule
The climate argument - nuclear power is CO2-free - apparently draws less and less. The French nuclear industry is perceived today primarily as a stumbling block for the development of renewable energies. For example: France has long sea coasts, but the construction of offshore wind farms is making little progress. EDF appears to be significantly less interested in this than in building new nuclear reactors. Thanks to their production, France produces less CO2 per capita than Germany, says EDF head Jean-Bernard Lévy.
Lévy is also not in a hurry to dismantle the Fessenheim plant. At the beginning of February, the nuclear safety authority ASN even criticized openly for "insufficient" preparation of the decommissioning work that had taken years. EDF must now provide additional information for all stages from the preparatory work to the treatment of the radioactive waste. The dismantling of Fessenheim * will take until 2040 according to the official timetable. Experts anticipate a longer duration.
Fessenheim: The industrial future does not seem particularly bright
The municipality of Fessenheim (2400 inhabitants) fears an exodus of up to 400 EDF employees. Germany and France have agreed in the Aachen Agreement of 2019 that they want to replace the decommissioned nuclear power plant with a common "business and innovation park". The project does not come from the spot. The Alsatian local politicians do not want a German say because they are already at odds with each other.
The idea of bringing the electric car manufacturer Tesla to Fessenheim also failed because of this; he preferred Berlin as a location at the end of 2019. A radiation treatment facility for radioactive metals on the Rhine does not seem to be popular with German partners. Fessenheim's industrial future does not seem particularly bright.
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