Memory lapses, controversial decisions, presidents who defend their results and scientists who taunt politicians… The parliamentary commission of inquiry will have offered a fine spectacle for those who have followed its – almost – 90 hearings. Aiming “to establish the reasons for France’s loss of sovereignty and energy independence”, it attempts to understand how our country was able to find itself, in 2022, a net importer of electricity for the first time in more than forty years. . “The errors were successive and monumental”, summarizes with L’Express Bernard Accoyer, former President of the National Assembly.
An observation to begin with: if the French energy policy has experienced “dysfunctions”, they are firstly due to “a technical and scientific lack of culture of our political class”. This harsh observation comes from Yves Bréchet, former High Commissioner for Atomic Energy (2012-2018), interviewed last November. With a tense face, barely hiding his resentment, the expert deplores the choices “decided by a headless duck, a disastrous chain of public decision-making”. more polite, French nuclear energy company (Sfen), who did not wait for the end of the hearings to write a report, notes that “successive governments have not given prospects to the nuclear industry. Paradoxically, it has suffered from an excess of scenarios, most often recovered for partisan purposes, and without any real desire to investigate the subject as a scientific controversy”.
“A corner of the table agreement”
The most emblematic case – and commented on – was surely the double decision of François Hollande to close the Fessenheim power station and to reduce the share of nuclear power from 75% (in 2011) to 50% (in 2025) in electricity production. It was a question of honoring a “political agreement of parliamentary majority” signed between the PS of Martine Aubry and the Greens of Cécile Duflot shortly before the presidential election of 2012. And this one, assured the former minister Arnaud Montebourg, is one of the elements making it possible to shed light on “the problem of the weakening of the nuclear industry”. Describing a “corner of the table agreement” impossible to hold, this deal led, according to him, to “a destruction of pure value by political stupidity”.
Above all, the figure retained was not based on any scientific basis. “The 50% was not the result of any impact study or needs analysis, admitted Manuel Valls. in electricity consumption. The target set for 2025 was not tenable, also said Delphine Batho, minister under François Hollande. But “it was realistic to consider [de l’atteindre] between 2028 and 2030”, with however increased use of fossil fuels.
“Ideology prevailed over reason and objective data, regrets Bernard Accoyer. The electoral agreements necessary to gain power led to the retention of ideological, dogmatic and anti-nuclear positions.”
“If nuclear power is dangerous, why only close Fessenheim?”
The former socialist president who, unheard of, responded to the invitation of the commission like his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy, however assured not to have committed to this agreement. “I wanted to keep nuclear as the main source of electricity production but reduce its share as renewable energies were to increase in production”, he recalled. During their hearing, the two former heads of state blamed each other for the current difficulties in the sector.
To instruct his successor, Nicolas Sarkozy mentioned the closure of the Fessenheim plant, for which “there was no valid reason. If nuclear power is dangerous, why only close Fessenheim? Only Alsatians should be saved?” . And the Penly project, also stopped by François Hollande: “Why?” He pretends to wonder. “Nobody knows anything about it. We lost twelve years”. The socialist himself confessed two regrets: “not having succeeded in raising the share of renewables sufficiently, […] and not having been able to obtain the opening of Flamanville”, which he wanted to replace the Fessenheim plant. But “the 58 reactors provided electricity without any major difficulty throughout my mandate”, he said. it belongs.
Nome law, “distorted competition”
François Hollande also believes he has inherited – take my look… – from a sector that is already in bad shape, disorganized. He lists the “conflicts between EDF and Areva (in great financial difficulty) and especially “the Nome law”. “If there is a decision that was contrary to nuclear power, it is this one. It was not just competition, but distorted competition”, he pointed out. This 2010 law, which created the Arenh mechanism (requiring EDF to sell its nuclear electricity to its competitors at a fixed price), was also reprimanded by all the ex-EDF bosses interviewed, who pointed to it as an essential factor in the pharaonic debt contracted by the energy company.
It’s obviously not the only one. Since 2021, EDF’s nuclear fleet has been heavily disrupted by cracks and corrosion problems. Faced with aging reactors and the growing electrification of society, Emmanuel Macron has chosen to bet on the atom and relaunch the sector. With in particular the construction of six EPR2 reactors. A solution recommended in the summer of 2018, in the Escatha-Collet-Billon report (since classified as a defense secret) commissioned a year earlier by Nicolas Hulot, Minister of Ecology at the time. However, the latter assured, annoyed, that he had “not reached him in good condition”. A failure which surely confirms Yves Bréchet in his judgment on the disastrous management of the energy subject by the political class. Bernard Accoyer confirms: “I’m not sure that France will recover for a very long time.”