2023-05-16 10:06:29
Technical, the bill simplifies the steps in order to concretize the ambition of Emmanuel Macron to build six new EPR reactors by 2035. HILTS / stock.adobe.com
The deputies will vote at the end of the afternoon on this text validated in the Senate a week ago. Its adoption should not be a problem.
To facilitate the construction of new reactors, Parliament is preparing to definitively adopt the nuclear stimulus bill on Tuesday by a final vote of the National Assembly, where the cause of the atom seems to be gaining ground. After the session of questions to the government, the deputies will vote at the end of the afternoon on this text largely validated in the Senate a week ago. Its adoption should not be a problem. At first reading, the Assembly had largely supported it by a coalition of votes from the presidential majority, LR, RN and communists.
Technical, the bill simplifies the process in order to achieve Emmanuel Macron’s ambition to build six new EPR reactors by 2035, and to launch studies for eight others. It is limited to new installations located in existing nuclear sites or nearby, such as Penly (Seine-Maritime), Gravelines (Nord)… This text on nuclear power follows a law to accelerate renewable energies, adopted in February.
In the wake of the Senate, parliamentarians raised a “lockintroduced in 2015 under François Hollande. The text thus removes the objective of a 50% reduction in the share of nuclear energy in the French electricity mix by 2035, as well as the ceiling of 63.2 gigawatts of total authorized nuclear production capacity. To the chagrin of opponents of nuclear power, he is thus speeding up the future multi-annual energy programming law, expected at best this summer.
The NGO Greenpeace and the Sortir du Nucléaire network did not fail to protest: “The government is therefore putting the cart before the horse and is implementing a forced marchof nuclear power, they denounce. Another sensitive point, the text toughens the penalties in the event of intrusion into the power stations, with a penalty increased from one to two years in prison and from 15,000 to 30,000 euros in fines.
Read alsoFrance unites its European nuclear allies
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“Cultural Battle”
In the Assembly, environmentalists and LFI railed against the bill, insisting on the “dangerousnessof nuclear energy, itstons of waste», and on the major crack on an emergency circuit of a Penly reactor, announced at the beginning of March. They are the only ones to campaign for an exit from the atom and the transition to 100% renewable energies from 2045. But twelve years after the nuclear disaster in Fukushima in Japan, the ecologists recognize that they have lost ground in their “cultural battleagainst the atom, like the polls which show growing support for nuclear power.
In the Assembly, a parliamentary commission of inquiry led by LR Raphaël Schellenberger and macronist Antoine Armand, openly pro-nuclear, pointed to a “political ramblingfor thirty years on energy issues. Faced with the climate emergency,we must no longer have the shameful nuclear“, Pleads Renaissance MP Maud Bregeon, former EDF and rapporteur for the recovery bill.
After fears of power cuts this winter against a backdrop of war in Ukraine, Minister of Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher praises a text “major step in building our country’s energy independence“, which will allow “to produce abundant, competitive and carbon-free energy“. On the right, the LRs support the text while criticizing “the spectacular spinby Emmanuel Macron on the question.
As expected, parliamentarians did not reintroduce the controversial nuclear safety reform wanted by the government. But the executive still considers it necessary to found the Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), a technical expert, within the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), the policeman of the power stations, despite protests from the unions. And in a joint committee, deputies and senators removed an amendment voted in the Assembly which aimed to prevent any merger by guaranteeing an organization “dualbetween IRSN and ASN.
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