Because France will build new nuclear reactors
All nuclear plans and targets announced by Macron. The article in the newspaper El Pais
France – writes El Pais – will resume building nuclear reactors. President Emmanuel Macron, in a televised address to the nation Tuesday evening, announced the restart of the civilian nuclear program, justifying it with two arguments. The first is the preservation of the country's energy independence at a time of rising prices and geopolitical uncertainty. The second is the fight against climate change with an energy source that, although far from being clean, emits practically no greenhouse gases.
"If we want to continue paying for our energy at reasonable rates and not be dependent on abroad, we must, at the same time, continue to save energy and invest in the production of decarbonised energy on our soil," Macron said. "That is why, in order to guarantee France's energy independence and ensure our country's electricity supply, and to achieve our goals, in particular carbon neutrality by 2050, we will relaunch the construction of nuclear reactors for the first time in decades. in our country and we will continue to develop renewable energies ".
Macron thus resolves the discussion on the future of nuclear energy in France. 75% of French electricity is generated with this energy source despite the fact that the Fukushima accident in Japan in 2011 opened a debate on its possible elimination.
Germany has opted for a shutdown of nuclear energy. And at the beginning of his term, the French president promised to shut down 14 reactors and reduce the share of electricity produced by nuclear power plants to 50% by 2035.
France is now embarking on another path. In October, Macron had already announced the investment of 1 billion euros in mini-reactors; this time it would be new EPR-type reactors such as the one already under construction since 2007 in Flamanville (Normandy) and which, after numerous delays and cost overruns, should start operating in 2023.
Macron unveiled the decision during a half-hour speech devoted largely to measures to stem a new wave of coronavirus pandemic and to defend the economic balance of nearly five years of his presidency ahead of the April 2022 elections. words and announcements could be read in electoral terms. Even though Macron hasn't officially declared his candidacy, it is assumed that he will run for re-election, and all polls favor him.
The figures, on paper, favor Macron. France will grow by nearly 7% in 2021, the highest level since 1969. Unemployment is below 8%, the lowest level in the last 15 years. The “whatever it takes” policy, as the President said during the lockdowns, has allowed the economy to recover. However, the country lives in a rarefied political atmosphere, with immigration and security at the center of the debates and the discourse linked to the far right which, according to polls, has the support of millions of French people.
Macron wants to avoid at all costs a social bomb like the revolt of the gilets jaunes in 2018. This fear partly explains recent measures such as the € 100 check for 38 million French, aimed at countering the increase in fuel prices , or the waiver of the controversial pension reform.
Other reforms are moving forward: Macron explained that, from December, the unemployed will have to demonstrate that they have worked for a minimum of six months in the past two years to receive the benefits, instead of the current four months. Other measures announced on Tuesday included the extension of state-guaranteed loans to businesses until June 2022 and a new homeland security law.
But the most striking measure unveiled on Tuesday concerns the fight against the coronavirus and is the opening, from the beginning of December, of a campaign for the third dose of vaccination for the over 50s. Those over 65 who have been vaccinated for more than six months first they will need the third dose if they want to keep the vaccination certificate required in France to enter cafes and restaurants, cinemas and museums, and travel on trains and planes.
The other noteworthy announcement was the renunciation, within this mandate, of the pension reform, one of Macron's symbolic projects and the cause of the demonstrations between December 2019 and January 2020. "The unanimous will expressed by the trade unions and professional organizations of concentrating efforts on the need for harmony in this moment that our nation is experiencing ", he justified," means that today there are no conditions to relaunch this project ".
The reform, which involved raising the retirement age and unifying a multitude of different calculation systems depending on the profession, was almost approved, but then the pandemic broke out in the winter of 2020 and the President of the he put it in a drawer, without scrapping it permanently: his intention is to take it back in 2022, after the elections – in case of victory.
(Extract from the foreign press review by Epr Comunicazione)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/la-francia-costruira-nuovi-reattori-nucleari/ on Sat, 13 Nov 2021 06:22:35 +0000.