France should already be enjoying all the benefits of this abundant carbon- and autocrat-free power. Its 56 reactors account for around 70% of national electricity-generating capacity, the highest share in the world
It provides reliable baseload electricity when sun isn’t drenching solar panels or wind isn’t wafting through turbine blades. And it does not leave its operators hostage to fossil fuels from dictators like Vladimir Putin, who has throttled the supply of Russian natural gas to Europe in response to Western sanctions over his invasion of Ukraine.
France should, in other words, be basking in the warm glow of controlled fission reactions. Instead, after a decade of mismanagement and political mixed signals, its nuclear industry is desperately trying not to implode. A third of France’s ageing fleet is out of action owing to maintenance and other technical problems. Experts warn of possible power outages during extreme cold spells later this winter. To keep up with demand, France has to import pricey electricity, from Germany of all places.
To understand the French nuclear business’s current predicament it is worth going back to its roots in the oil shock of 1973. At the time, most French power plants ran on petroleum. As the fuel became scarce, French politicians concluded that in order to be truly sovereign, the country needed an energy source it could control. Nuclear power seemed just the ticket. France already knew something about the technology, having built an atom bomb and nuclear submarines.
Meanwhile, with little accountability and oversight the industry quickly became a state within a state, characterised by groupthink and, in the words of one former insider, “a serious lack of self-doubt”. This led to some terrible business decisions. In the early 2000s Framatome, the company that built reactors for, developed ambitions of its own.
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