We had already known this atmosphere in the early 2000s, after the long winter in which the Chernobyl disaster had plunged the nuclear industry. From Europe to the United States and from Russia to emerging countries in search of power, it was time for its “rebirth”. The atomic engineers looked up. Once again on the offensive, France had rearmed itself by creating Areva, a giant present in all trades, from uranium mines and reactors to the reprocessing of irradiated waste.
The accident at the Japanese Fukushima power plant in 2011 shattered the renewed confidence of nucleophiles. It sent the balance of opinion in the other direction and increased the cost of this energy, where each progress required in the safety of power stations comes at a high price. The decade was black for a sector which had made the pride of post-Gaullian France and its technoscientific elites: the near bankruptcy of Areva saved by the State as part of a costly recapitalization-restructuring, exports at half mast, loss of valuable skills due to lack of orders, industrial fiasco of the Flamanville EPR (Manche) … It was not until the dissipation of the effects of Fukushima and the climatic runaway that nuclear power became acceptable again.
We hardly dare to use this pun, but the climate is heating up for nuclear power. And not because China wants to build 150 reactors by 2050. Like twenty years ago, its supporters are regaining hope. He was not excommunicated at COP 26 in Glasgow (Scotland), as in previous summits. Environmentalists accept it willy-nilly, going back on a final condemnation that has structured the history and doctrine of the Greens.
This is the political moment chosen by Emmanuel Macron to get out of a certain ambiguity and affirm that “Our energy and ecological future depends on nuclear power”. It has just announced a billion for the small modular reactors (SMR) of the Nuward program associating EDF and the CEA with Naval group and TechnicAtome, the specialist in nuclear heating systems for submarines. And the head of state is preparing above all to approve the construction of six EPR 2, supposed to be less expensive than the current EPR.
Reconquest
This program of nearly 50 billion euros will mark a relaunch of the sector unparalleled since the “Messmer plan” of 1974. Industrialists are thinking about the announcement: a staging during a trip to the “nuclear pole” of Burgundy? Or on the occasion of the World Nuclear Exhibition in Villepinte (Seine-Saint-Denis), at the end of November, to show competing countries that France is back? The Elysian green light leaves so little doubt that EDF has committed several hundred million euros in orders and pre-selected four already “nuclear” sites, including Penly (Seine-Maritime) and Gravelines (North). Its subsidiary Framatome immediately launched the long production process of large reactor forgings.
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