How France’s prized nuclear sector stalled in Europe’s hour of need

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine prompted Europe’s energy crisis and climate change racks the world, you could expect France to be congratulating itself on its vast fleet of nuclear power stations. After all, nuclear energy produces barely any CO2 and does not leave countries relying on Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

France went all in on nuclear after the OPEC embargo sparked the 1973 oil shock – unlike Britain, for example, which tapped then-abundant fossil fuel reserves in the North Sea (and is now one of the countries worst-affected by energy inflation).

Nuclear power now produces some 70 percent of France’s energy – the highest proportion in the world – thanks to this long-term strategy known as the Messmer plan (named after its architect, then PM Pierre Messmer) to nourish domestic nuclear expertise and build a large fleet of nuclear reactors. 

“Obviously there was the fact that France did not have large reserves of coal or gas and they weren’t able to start drilling in the North Sea; and there was also that Gaullist desire to ensure national independence, while France already had a certain amount of nuclear expertise because it had its independent nuclear weapons system known as the force de frappe,” explained Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow in economics and trade at the German Marshall Fund Brussels bureau.

Largely thanks to this policy stretching back to the 1970s, French CO2 emissions per capita stood at around 4.5 tons in 2019, compared to 5.2 tons in the UK and 7.9 tons in Germany, which has leaned heavily on Russian gas.

France’s nuclear plants ‘important for Europe’ 

But rather than enjoying the benefits of its vaunted nuclear industry, France found itself importing electricity from Germany in 2022. By November, a record 26 of France’s 56 nuclear reactors were shut for repairs or maintenance – although as of January 2 that figure had fallen to 15 and is expected to fall to nine by the end of January, according to Olivier Appert, an energy specialist at the French Institute of International Affairs (IFRI) in Paris and a member of the French Academy of Engineering.  

Meanwhile the French government is fully nationalising EDF, the state-controlled energy company running the power stations, to stop it going bankrupt. EDF’s new boss Luc Rémont said in October the company faces a “serious crisis”.

“France’s nuclear energy production was in August 2022 the lowest it’s been for 30 years,” Appert noted.

France has been a “net exporter of electricity” over the past decades, Appert added. But “since the autumn of 2022, in light of the maintenance problems, France became a net importer for the first time in 30 years or so” – even if lower energy demand meant it became an energy exporter again on January 2.

This makes matters worse for Europe as a whole as it faces the energy crunch caused by Putin cutting off the supplies of Russian gas in retaliation for European sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.

“France’s nuclear plants are very important for electricity generation in Europe as a whole,” Appert continued. “The network is very interconnected; each member contributes to the overall security of the system.”

‘Bad luck’

In part, France’s nuclear power stations can be seen as victims of that successful response to the 1973 energy crisis. So many of them were built around the same time as France moved relatively quickly into this current energy paradigm – and that means they have to undergo maintenance around the same time. They were also built according to a single standard – and that means issues found in one plant prompt fixes in others.

“Plants will need to be shut down for maintenance or decennial revision and this happens every two or 10 years,” Appert said. “But the time nuclear power stations were taken out of action was extended a great deal by Covid, because of course people couldn’t move around and do their jobs in the usual way during the lockdowns. So one really musn’t underestimate the effect of Covid in helping cause France’s current nuclear problems.”

As well as the impact of Covid, last summer’s drought was another “bad luck” factor pushing France’s nuclear capacity down, Kirkegaard pointed out, because it meant there was “less water available for cooling reactors”.

However, the current problems are not only down to bad luck. Ahead of the 2012 presidential elections, Socialist François Hollande cut a deal with the Greens in exchange for their support: he vowed to shut the two reactors at Fessenheim, France’s oldest nuclear plant, and cut to 50 percent the proportion of French energy nuclear generates by 2025. After he won, Hollande closed the two reactors – even if he reneged on part of the deal by keeping nuclear’s contribution to French energy needs at around 70 percent.

‘Relic of a bygone age’  

Nuclear energy was perceived quite differently a decade ago. The 2011 nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima plant caused by a tsunami made many feel wary of nuclear power – even prompting then chancellor Angela Merkel to promise a phase-out of nuclear energy in Germany, under pressure from the ascendant Greens.   

In addition to the Fukushima effect, concerns about the supply security of natural gas and the environmental impact of fossil fuels were less prominent a decade ago. “It wasn’t just Germany but many other European countries, including France, that believed in a relationship with Russia,” Kirkegaard noted. “And back in 2012, especially in Germany but also elsewhere in Europe, plenty of people saw nuclear power as a bigger safety issue than carbon emissions from an environmental point of view,” he added.   

All that has changed as heatwaves bake Europe every summer and the invasion of Ukraine exposed Russia as an untenable gas supplier for the old continent. Nearly 80 percent of the French public support nuclear energy, up 20 points from 2016, according to an Elabe poll for Les Échos published in November. Even Germany – with the Greens now in government – is extending the life of three nuclear power stations until April.

“The discourse has changed a lot against natural gas, against fossil fuels more generally, in favour of basically carbon-free energy sources like nuclear,” Kirkegaard noted. “Hollande’s pledge in 2012 is the legacy of a bygone age.”  

But the consequences of Hollande’s pact have contributed to France’s current nuclear woes, Kirkegaard continued. In particular, it will have put many talented engineers off the French nuclear sector, he said, because “people are not going to pledge their future to an industry perceived to be in terminal decline”. Moreover, “there’s clearly a reason why so many French reactors are as old as they are”, Kirkegaard added: “They haven’t been consistently replaced – so Hollande’s statements absolutely had an effect.”

A renaissance thanks to Macron?  

Even before the energy crunch, Hollande’s successor Emmanuel Macron was keen to renew Messmer’s approach and keep France in the vanguard of the nuclear industry –announcing in 2021 that the “number one priority” for his industrial strategy is for France to develop a cutting-edge fleet of small-scale nuclear reactors by 2030.  

Together with this long-term plan, Macron acted to deal with the nuclear situation in the short term with that full nationalisation of EDF so the state can pump in funds.  

“Nationalising EDF means a lot of public money can be put in to resolve the problems, and – handily for Macron’s government – because it’s a state-owned company, the money it’s losing, which will be quite significant, will not come up officially on the public books for a while,” Kirkegaard said. “That said, the state will still be paying to sort out EDF,” he cautioned.  

During this process, Macron’s strategy will take the French nuclear sector into a new paradigm, away from big reactors such as the one EDF is constructing at Flamanville next to the English Channel, which has been married by delays and cost overruns.

The new approach stands a good chance of bearing fruit, Kirkegaard concluded: “Building smaller reactors makes a lot of sense because they’re a lot quicker and easier to build”, he said. “So you’re much less likely to have building delays, and as well as that it’s much easier to find suitable locations for them because they’re a lot smaller – and that means they’re advantageous for France and especially well-suited for export to more densely populated countries like the UK.”