“The acceleration” of nuclear “will not be done to the detriment of the safety of our installations”, assured the Minister of Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher, at the opening of the debates on the bill dedicated to nuclear Monday at the ‘Assembly.
“This bill does not affect a single comma of our nuclear safety procedures”, insisted the minister before the deputies, while employees of the Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) demonstrated near the Palais Bourbon against the controversial reorganization of security.
The government added the reform of nuclear safety by a simple amendment, adopted by the deputies in committee. He wants to integrate the IRSN, technical expert, to the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), the police of the power stations.
“At a time when the workload will increase, it is proposed to expand ASN’s missions. Who can be against? And to bring together, in the manner of Canada or the United States, the skills of IRSN with those of ASN under the protective status of independent administrative authority”, justified Agnès Pannier-Runacher.
“ASN would thus be the second largest safety authority in the world in terms of human and financial resources with a scientific credibility that I wish to be total”, she assured.
More broadly, the Minister praised this simplification text which accompanies Emmanuel Macron’s promise to build six new EPR reactors by 2035.
“It is neither more nor less the thread of the greatest French industrial adventure since the 1970s that we are renewing”, she argued.
Against fossil fuels, “accelerating renewable energies is being an ecologist. Reviving our nuclear industry means being an environmentalist,” she said.
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The security reform aroused the ire of the IRSN unions as well as the ASN, the left, and protests even in the majority.
In a press briefing organized just before the session, environmentalists and LFI, hostile to nuclear power, denounced a “totally irresponsible dismantling”, an “aberration”.
More broadly, the LFI Aurélie Trouvé criticized an “atomic headlong rush”, “extremely dangerous” with this bill.
“The moment is serious”, “our power stations are aging badly”, abounded the ecologist Julie Laernoes, surrounded by activists from Greenpeace and the Network Sortir du nuclear.