The French government has now mapped out its new nuclear power plants as part of its quest for low-carbon electricity. It had identified two locations – Penly, in Normandy, and Gravelines, also in France – for six future high-power reactors. The third location is now known: Two reactors will be built in Le Bugey, in eastern France. It was competing with Triscastin, further south, following a proposal from state-owned electricity giant EDF. The Elysée announced the decision at the end of a nuclear policy council convened by French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, July 19.
"The Bugey site is better prepared than Tricastin, for which further studies must be carried out," said the office of Energy Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher. "So it's a rational choice to keep to the schedule." Cooled by water from the Rhône river, the nuclear site in Le Bugey is located in Saint-Vulbas, 40 kilometers east of Lyon. It is home to the country's four oldest reactors still in service.
Construction work on these six next-generation EPR 2 (European Pressurized Reactors) has not yet begun. Ideally, EDF wants to commission a first pair at Penly in 2035, the second at Gravelines in 2038, and the third at Bugey in 2042. With this last decision, "the location of the first phase of the EPR 2 construction program has now been decided," the French presidency said in a statement.
In addition to these first six EPR 2s, the government is considering possibly building a further eight. "Technical studies and analyses will continue at the Tricastin site with a view to hosting future nuclear reactors," the Elysée said. "We are ready," Marie-Pierre Mouton, the president of the local council of the Drôme, where Tricastin is located, said soon after.
On June 28, even though "the law does not currently provide for the deployment of EPRs outside existing sites," Macron went so far as to consider building reactors between Marseille and Fos-sur-Mer. "We're in a submersible zone, a seismic zone. If there's one place in France where we won't be able to build an EPR, it's Marseille," said Benoît Payan, the mayor of Marseille.
'Three challenges'
Wednesday's nuclear policy council, the second this year, also covered other issues. In particular, it discussed the relaunch of a controversial project to reform the regulation of nuclear energy. The idea of merging the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) and the Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), a plan that had been presented by the government in February unexpectedly, had triggered vivid discontent. The Parliament rejected the proposal in March. However, on July 11, the Office Parlementaire d'Evaluation des Choix Scientifiques et Technologiques (OPECST), a parliament watchdog, backed such a reorganization, providing new arguments to the government. "Based on OPECST's recommendations, we want to bring safety governance up to its highest level," Pannier-Runacher said.
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