The recovery is now well underway. To facilitate the construction of six new reactors, Parliament definitively adopted Tuesday the bill to revive nuclear power, by a final vote of the National Assembly, where the cause of the atom is gaining ground. A week after broad support from the Senate, the deputies voted the text by 399 votes against 100, with a coalition of votes from the presidential camp, LR, the RN and communists. Only the ecologist and rebellious groups (LFI) voted against. The PS, which had opposed the text at first reading, abstained this time, after describing nuclear power as a "transition energy" towards renewables.
✅ Final adoption of the #PJLNucléaire.
As with renewable energies, we have been able to build a majority of projects to prepare the relaunch of our #nucléaire policy.
Always with the same objective: to be the 1st great nation to get out of fossil fuels! pic.twitter.com/szmeemzdra
— Agnès Pannier-Runacher 🇫🇷🇪🇺 (@AgnesRunacher) May 16, 2023
The Minister of Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher praises a "major text" to "produce independent, competitive and decarbonized energy", and calls for a "political consensus" in energy matters. In the morning, it brought together in Paris about fifteen representatives of pro-nuclear European countries, in order to weigh in the "energy strategy" of the European Union.
Speeding up
Technical, the French bill simplifies the steps to achieve Emmanuel Macron's ambition to build six new EPR reactors by 2035, and to launch studies for eight others. It concerns new installations located in existing nuclear sites or nearby, such as Penly (Seine-Maritime), or Gravelines (Nord).
In the wake of the Senate, parliamentarians lifted a lock introduced in 2015 under François Hollande, and already modified under Emmanuel Macron. The text thus removes the objective of a reduction to 50% of the share of nuclear energy in the French electricity mix by 2035 (initially 2025), as well as the ceiling of 63.2 gigawatts of total authorized nuclear generation capacity.
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To the chagrin of opponents of nuclear power, he is speeding up the future multiannual energy programming law, expected at best this summer. "Everything was done in a mess. (...) Only this programming law could decide whether or not to revive nuclear power, "said the Insoumise Maxime Laisney. The NGO Greenpeace and the network Sortir du nucléaire did not fail to protest: "the government is therefore putting the cart before the horse and acts a forced revival," they denounce.
"Cultural battle"
Another sensitive point, the text toughens the penalties in case of intrusion into the plants, with a penalty increased from one to two years in prison and a fine of 15,000 to 30,000 euros. As expected, parliamentarians also failed to reintroduce the government's controversial nuclear safety reform. But the executive still considers it necessary to merge the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), a technical expert, within the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), the policeman of the power plants, despite the protests of the unions.
In the Assembly, ecologists and LFI railed against the bill, insisting on the "tons of waste" of nuclear, and on the significant crack on an emergency circuit of a reactor in Penly, announced in early March. Insoumise and Greens, who campaign for an exit from the atom in favor of renewable energies, promise an appeal to the Constitutional Council. But twelve years after the Fukushima disaster in Japan, environmentalists admit to having lost ground in their "cultural battle" against nuclear power, as polls show growing support.
In the Assembly, a parliamentary commission of inquiry led by the LR Raphaël Schellenberger and the macronist Antoine Armand, openly pro-nuclear, pointed the finger at a "political rambling" for thirty years on energy issues. Faced with the climate emergency, and after fears of power cuts this winter against the backdrop of war in Ukraine, "we must no longer have nuclear shame," pleads Renaissance MP Maud Bregeon, former EDF and rapporteur of the bill.