In 2022, the best-selling book in France is neither a Asterix nor a novel by Guillaume Musso. It’s a comic that’s basically about… energy. The exceptional sales of endless world (Dargaud, 2021), by Christophe Blain and Jean-Marc Jancovici, testify to the interest of the French for these questions, about which we have never talked so much as in 2022. This curiosity is also evident in the field: in this year of energy crisis, a growing number of French people visited electricity production sites.
Thus, in 2022, EDF recorded 500,000 visitors to its sites open to the public (around a hundred), including 80,000 to its nuclear power plants. A figure up 28% compared to the average observed before the Covid-19 pandemic (390,000 visitors). Even though some reactors are shut down, visits continue to follow one another, in particular at Gravelines (North), Flamanville (Manche) and Civaux (Vienne), the most visited power plants in France. The system varies from one site to another, with exhibition spaces, conferences, films or models, but also guided walks, safety shoes and helmet on the head, to the engine rooms and reactor control simulators.
“A Better Picture”
For EDF, these visitors are blessed bread: golden opportunities to promote its model, the safety of the facilities, its various professions… An image issue, but also a human resources issue, while the power plants are faced with serious difficulties in recruiting, in particular skilled workers and technicians.
EDF has analyzed the effect of these visits: tourists leave “with a better corporate image”, explains Xavier Delerue, heritage manager at EDF. However, the audience is less diverse than EDF had hoped: there are above all men, CSP+, with a high average age. The company tries to target young people more and tries to promote its visits to national education. She has also developed a turnkey two-hour workshop for teachers.
Good health of industrial tourism
This new interest in EDF sites also testifies to the good health of industrial tourism, which continues to develop quietly. “Today, 3,000 companies offer visits to their sites, compared to 2,000 five years ago: many SMEs, but more and more large groups”says Cécile Pierre, general delegate of the Entreprise et Découverte association, which lists industrial tourism activities in France.
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