A bill aimed at accelerating the construction of nuclear reactors is presented this Wednesday in the Council of Ministers, when the public debate on the place of the atom in France begins. While the need for electricity will grow to allow the country to extract itself from fossil fuels, President Emmanuel Macron supports the construction of six new generation EPR reactors, with an option for eight others, and the development of renewable energies , solar and offshore wind power first.
This text will be examined in early 2023, first in the National Assembly, said the Ministry of Energy Transition. From this same Wednesday, a bill to accelerate renewables, the deployment of which is glaringly late, must be examined by the Senate.
“If we want both to have energy independence but also to meet our climate objectives, we must replace fossil fuels with low-carbon energies. Nuclear is today the lowest carbon energy of all the solutions available to us, ”justified Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher on Friday at the Chinon power station (Indre-et-Loire).
Simplified administrative procedures
Installed on the sites of existing power plants, the future EPRs would be located, for the first two, in Penly (Seine-Maritime) then Gravelines (North). The location of the third pair of reactors has not been decided, the Rhône valley (Bugey or Tricastin) is envisaged.
VIDEO. Nuclear: Macron announces the construction of six new generation EPR2s
The bill presented on Wednesday aims to “save time”, by simplifying administrative procedures: for example, sites would be exempt from planning permission because compliance control would be carried out by state services. The projects will respond to “an imperative reason of major public interest, allowing them to benefit from one of the conditions for granting derogations relating to protected species”, he stipulates. And work on buildings not intended to receive radioactive substances can be carried out before closing the public inquiry.
Emmanuel Macron could thus lay the first stone before the end of his mandate in 2027, even if the commissioning of this first EPR could not be done before 2035 or even 2037. Consulted obligatorily for opinion, the National Council for Ecological Transition ( CNTE), which brings together unions, employers, NGOs… “regretted the insufficient time” given to it to decide on this bill. The CNTE further notes that this text of the law “cannot prejudge the conclusions of the public debate”.
Environmental associations in particular had reacted angrily to the sudden reception of this project. “The passage in force under false pretexts of emergency in the short term is not acceptable”, had said Allain Bougrain-Dubourg, of the League of protection of the birds (LPO), deploring “a parody of consultation” and the absence of a study of the impact of nuclear power on “aquatic fauna and the massive mortalities of birds”.
Public debate since December 26
This bill “does not preempt the ongoing consultations or the future climate energy laws which will decide” in fine, assured the ministry on Monday. “We want to have the support of the populations and elected officials,” insisted Agnès Pannier-Runacher.
Parliamentarians will in fact have to vote from the second half of 2023 on France’s energy and climate strategy. Until then, the French will be able to express themselves. A public debate on the construction of the six EPRs, mandatory for the project leader EDF, began on October 27 and will last until February 27. At the same time, another broader consultation on energy is organized by the government until December 31, in particular online (concertation-energie.gouv.fr).
These two processes, the summaries of which will be delivered to parliamentarians, could be based on the 2050 scenarios of the RTE network manager and Ademe. All of these scenarios include a surge in renewable energies, with a variable share of nuclear (or no nuclear at all, which would however require very proactive sobriety measures). France, which depends on nuclear power for around 70% of its electricity, decided in 2015 to diversify its sources of supply by closing 14 of its 58 reactors (two have already closed), before a reversal announced by Emmanuel Macron at the end of 2021.