- French President Emmanuel Macron wants to counteract climate change with nuclear power plants and wind energy.
- He announced that he would initiate the construction of six new nuclear power plants. They should be built by 2050. By then he wants to have it checked to see whether more power plants are needed.
- In addition, Macron wants to have 50 wind farms built at sea, as he has also announced. With these measures, the French President wants to double the production of renewable energies in this decade.
Emmanuel Macron was the first French president to shut down a nuclear power plant: Fessenheim in the summer of 2020, almost 50 kilometers from Basel. However, this does not mean the beginning of the phase-out of nuclear energy. On the contrary: on Thursday President Macron announced massive investments in nuclear energy.
Six new nuclear power plants should be built and the construction of eight more power plants should be examined by 2050, said Macron in Belfort in eastern France. “This is the renaissance of French nuclear power.” At the same time, the service life of all existing power plants will be extended if safety permits.
No power plant should go off the grid if there are no compelling safety reasons for doing so. The power company EDF has been instructed to check whether the term of the nuclear power plants can be extended beyond 50 years.
This is the renaissance of French nuclear power.
“We are fortunate that in France we can count on a strong nuclear industry, rich in expertise and with hundreds of thousands of jobs,” said Macron. However, the first reactor of the new EPR generation will not go online until 2035.
Expansion of renewable energies
At the same time, Macron announced an expansion of renewable energy such as sun and wind. “We need to massively expand renewable energies,” Macron affirmed, “simply because they are the only way to meet our immediate electricity needs.”
It takes about 15 years to build a nuclear reactor. Macron wants to double production from renewable energies by 2030 and “increase it even further” by 2050.