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In the towns around the Cruas-Meysse power plant, we are following the presidential debate around nuclear power carefully, because the atom provides a living for many people in the region. The anti find themselves quite lonely.
When you arrive in Cruas (Ardèche), the first noticeable thing is the mistral. A wind to dehorn the oxen, which makes the Rhône quiver and the bare branches of the trees. “It’s not always like that, but when it blows, it really blows”, slips the waitress of a restaurant, wiping glasses while the canvas that protects her terrace shakes under the gusts. We almost forget the atypical landscape of this town of just over 3,000 inhabitants: its magnificent medieval center, clinging to a mountain scraped by two cement manufacturers, Lafarge and Calcia, which surround the town on either side. And then, of course, these four huge concrete towers, unmissable by the river, and their continuous plumes of white smoke.
Commissioned between 1983 and 1985, the Cruas-Meysse nuclear power plant will soon celebrate its 40th anniversary. Which places it, like eleven other of its congeners, at the heart of the debate on the extension of the operating life of reactors, and a fortiori at the forefront of the presidential debate in this election year. Because it is a question not only of France’s energy sovereignty at a time of rising energy prices, but also of ecological transition to limit greenhouse gas emissions…