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 about 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 for years opposed 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 five episodes of a French bankruptcy.
EPISODE 1 >> Nuclear, a French bankruptcy: the cessation of the Astrid project, “a historic error”
EPISODE 2 >> Nuclear, a French bankruptcy: how the United States won the “Polish file”
EPISODE 3 >> Nuclear, a French bankruptcy: EDF and the ball and chain of opening up to competition
The measure seemed legitimate. It should make it possible to gain in efficiency and streamline procedures, in a context of revival of the nuclear sector. Alas!, the merger demanded by the government between the Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) and the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) has above all turned into a useless controversy over the level of risk in our power stations. “This reform has been exploited, regrets Fabien Bouglé, author of Nuclear: the hidden truths (Editions du Rocher, 2021). Safety has been confused with the method to organize it. Nobody wants to see a nuclear incident happen, with radioactivity everywhere.” And the specialist in energy issues adds: “Who have we seen opposing this fusion? Europe Ecologie-Les Verts, the négaWatt association… In short, the pro-wind and anti-nuclear galaxy.”
“In truth, other countries, such as the United States, Switzerland or Sweden, are already operating with an organizational rapprochement of this type, without any apparent problem”, notes Dominique Grenêche, professor at Sciences Po and at the Institut national nuclear science and technology. But in France, these international considerations weigh very little in the debates. “However, IRSN has flaws that it would be good to correct, underlines an atom expert. Within the institution, some of the staff have gotten used to having very long schedules, not not respond quickly to requests and sometimes do unnecessary work. It becomes embarrassing.” In terms of research, for example, the IRSN spends a lot of resources to develop its own calculation codes. There are twenty of them. Some are used to model the propagation of radioactive elements in rivers, others to assess the very long-term environmental consequences of geological disposal of radioactive waste, etc.
A reform not yet abandoned
The problem? Similar programs can be found at the CEA, at EDF or on the market. “Do we really need to duplicate everything? In addition, comparing the results between two different codes can be tricky. Sometimes we don’t know how to explain it,” confides a scientist. “We notice within the IRSN a desire to stand out at all costs from what is done in the industry, as if the latter were not worthy of trust. Over time, its expertise is based more and more on the academic field and less and less on people who have worked in the sector. It happens that some experts sometimes move away from the reality on the ground. To put it another way, IRSN is gradually detached from the tool to which it is supposed to apply its expertise”, explains Myrto Tripathi, president and founder of the association Voice of Nuclear.
This is no doubt the reason why the government has not completely abandoned the reform. Admittedly, the recent text of the law on the acceleration of the nuclear sector voted by the two chambers no longer mentions it. But the Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Choices was seized by the Senate to produce a study on the implications of the merger. Will its conclusions go against previous reports, which were rather unfavorable to the rapprochement of the two institutions? “It wouldn’t be a scandal,” says a source. In the meantime, France has lost an opportunity to reform part of its institutions.