It took a war at the gates of Europe for the question of France’s sovereignty and energy independence to once again become a priority subject. So that France finally stops being ashamed of its nuclear model and announces a little over a year ago the relaunch of its program with the construction of at least six new EPR reactors. It was high time because the French atom sector has been wrung out of decades of renunciations, reversals, political cowardice and shaky compromises. How did we come to this? Internal industrial wars like the one that opposed for years two French giants, EDF and Areva, partly explain this rout. But also political, geopolitical, ideological and technological battles that supporters of the atom have often lost. L’Express tells the story in 5 episodes of a French bankruptcy.
Spring 2018. France is still the most advanced country in the world in terms of fast neutron reactors (FNR), facilities capable of drawing on our stocks of plutonium and depleted uranium to operate. With Phénix and Superphénix, its engineers have demonstrated that this technology works, and that it can even be connected to the network. The CEA, Framatome and EDF teams have even been working since 2010 on the development of a new reactor of this type, a technological gem called Astrid capable of bringing France into sustainable nuclear power, while ensuring its supply of fuel for millennia.
But on March 28, everything collapsed. The future investment program led by the General Secretariat for Investment (SGPI), under the authority of Matignon, held a meeting to monitor the project and stopped its funding with the stroke of a pen. “The arguments of the time? We have enough uranium, this technology is not ready, we will see… The same irresponsible speeches that do not hold up to scrutiny and that we have been hearing for twenty or thirty years to procrastinate on research on nuclear power of the future”, recalls, annoyed, a former CEA employee.
“At the time, we did not understand. Neither did our Japanese allies, continues another. While we were rolling out the red carpet, we were dismantled in six months.” To drive the point home, the State appoints François Jacq to the position of chairman of the board of directors of the CEA with the mission of implementing the government’s choice. The beginning of a period of disillusionment for the teams. “He didn’t have his own vision, nor the CV he needed,” says an atom specialist. The arrival of Philippe Stohr at the head of the nuclear studies department is no more convincing: “Just before, at Fortum, the Finnish EDF, he was in charge of the wind turbine branch”, denounces an expert.
In the scientific community, the wound remains acute
In a few months, France lost Astrid and stopped the adjoining programs such as the youth of Masurca, a model designed to validate the operation of fast neutron reactor cores, or the program for the chemical separation of americium, which becomes waste. of high activity with long life if there is no FNR to burn it. “A historic error”, plague Yves Bréchet, former high commissioner for atomic energy. With current reactor technology, we only use a tiny fraction (less than 1%) of the natural uranium. In addition, we need to enrich it. These operations generate large quantities of energetic materials that become waste. Moreover, we only have at best a century of uranium resources in front of us, assuming that the world park does not evolve, which is not realistic. “With FNRs, on the other hand, we already have fuel on our soil for several thousand years, in the form of plutonium or depleted uranium”, estimates Claire Kerboul, consultant in nuclear physics and former researcher at the CEA. Thanks to this technology, there is no longer any need to import uranium or to carry radioactive material back and forth between the enrichment facilities at Tricastin and the reprocessing facilities at La Hague. Moreover, FNR does not produce long-lived high-level waste, unlike current technologies. With it, the volume of Cigeo, designed to store our most problematic waste in depth, could be divided by ten!
So why deprive yourself of such an asset? In the scientific community, the wound remains acute, five years later. “Several reports insisted on the need to switch to RNR, recalls Yves Bréchet. Elysée at the time. So politicians can’t say they didn’t know.” But we have to believe that the opponents of RNR are numerous, underlines the former high commissioner: “There are those who want to save money, those who want to caress the government in the direction of the hair… and then the whole reprocessing industry , which can only thrive in the current situation.”
Getting France back on track will take time
For Joël Guidez, former boss of Phénix and specialist in fast sodium reactors, “Astrid’s shutdown was decided at a time when anti-nuclear sentiment predominated. It was the time of the closure of Fessenheim and the famous law which was to reduce the nuclear share to 50% [NDLR : abrogée récemment]. As far as nuclear power is concerned, we were no longer building anything.” Getting France back on the right path will not be easy. A sign that our country has not yet learned the lessons of the past, the CEA website still praises the merits of ” multi-recycling in PWR”, a technique aimed at reusing plutonium several times in our current pressurized water reactors. “An intellectual scam: it is expensive and it does not work”, underline several specialists.
“With the release of the recent investigation report on France’s loss of energy independence, the CEA still felt obliged to react”, notes Dominique Vignon, former boss of Framatome and member of the Academy of Technologies. . Its teams are now developing two RNR projects as part of the France 2030 plan. Several start-ups are also in the running. Despite everything, more is needed to really revive the sector. “We do not put the means that it would take in an organized way on a credible project. We are still at the study stage. The industry part is not restarting”, judges Joël Guidez. “Ideally, all the teams should be funded equally and given two years to compare the different technologies that arise, before making a choice,” explains Dominique Vignon. For the time being, it is above all the Americans who are advancing rapidly. “They really understood the interest of RNR”, warns Yves Bréchet. France, alas, is beginning to be left behind.