Counterfeiting is an ugly defect. But perhaps it would be time for us to be French, in turn learned to inspire ourselves from Chinese products, starting with their nuclear power plants? Admittedly, history pleads in favor of France, which knew, in the 1970s, to take the turning point of civil nuclear and build in two decades 56 reactors. The best response to the 1973 oil shock, ensuring the country’s energy independence. At the time, China barely woke up, but already, its leaders were eyeing our new power plants: in 1983, the two countries signed a cooperation agreement to build a first tranche in southern China, the famous Daya Bay contract. Li Peng, at the time Minister of Electric Energy, was not mistaken: “France was the first country to undertake negotiations with China on a nuclear power plant project, the first to want to sell us reactors and the first to declare itself ready to transfer its technology without subsequent control of its use.” (1)
Five decades later, China has more than caught up. At the head of a nuclear fleet equivalent to that of France, she has 36 future reactors in her boxes, including 11 announced by Beijing last summer. On the price side, red nuclear is unbeatable: a third of the tricolor cost. As for the construction deadlines, they are divided by two or even three, China boasting of building a reactor in fifty-six months.
“No alternative”
But how do they do it? It is precisely this Chinese recipe that France must copy if it wants to relaunch its nuclear industry, enclosed following a series of political faults. A recipe that holds in a word: standardization. Too bad for our engineers keen on unique exemplary models, of the Flamanville type. It is urgent to make plants in series, as the Chinese do with their Hualong-1 model, in order to lower costs.
The French Nuclear Policy Council of March 19 should act the principles of this revival of nuclear, announced three years ago by Emmanuel Macron. The green light of the government should not intervene before the end of 2026, the time for EDF and the state of Toper on the invoice of the next six EPR, their financing and the electricity prices.
Is it too late? Yes, if we had listened to the policies that wanted to close a dozen plants by 2032. A first class burial of the tricolor civil atom. Now, after the error of Fessenheim, the time is not only for maintenance but for the extension of the current park, far beyond the forty years planned. Pending the commissioning of future EPRs in series. Let us not dream: after the fukushima accident, there will never be a low cost nuclear. But, as a specialist admits, “nuclear produces massive, reliable and totally decarbonized electricity: there is no alternative today. We can try to connect a data center to a wind farm or a solar park: it will never work”.
(1) Li Peng, in March 1984, From starting to development. Li Peng’s electrical newspaper (Editions Xinhua, Beijing, 2004).