France is recognized as a hotbed of culture, gastronomy and style. The country is also something of a world leader in another area: nuclear power.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, in France it is home to 56 nuclear power plants which is the second, only the United States, which has 94.
Together, these French facilities have a combined capacity of 61,370 megawatts (MW). And as for the share of nuclear power in French electricity production, the IAEA says it was 70.6% in 2019, the highest in the world.
Below, CNBC’s “Sustainable Energy” looks at the role that nuclear power can play in the energy future of both France and the wider world.
An important player
Peter Osbaldstone, a research director at research group Wood Mackenzie, told CNBC in an email that France was “by far the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.”
“The emission intensity of the French power is lower than the main neighboring countries. The market has a relatively small share of the total supply provided by fossil fuels,” he further explained.
“Because nuclear market with low marginal cost is so prominent, French wholesale prices tend to be lower than in neighboring markets,” he added, adding that this factor also affected the price of end users. relatively low.
Andrew Lever, a director at the Carbon Trust, a consulting firm, told CNBC that France had a low dependence on fossil-based power generation.
“From a carbon reduction perspective, it therefore starts from a lower base point compared to other economies that are more dependent on fossil fuel generation,” he added.
Macron’s mission
Last December, French President Emmanuel Macron indicated that nuclear power would play an important role in the country’s energy mix.
According to a translation of his remarks published by Reuters, Macron said the French nuclear industry “would remain the cornerstone of our strategic autonomy.”
Macron’s comments suggest that France will continue its relationship with nuclear power into the future, but changes are underway. Indeed, by 2035, the government wants to reduce the share of nuclear power in its electricity mix to 50%. A mixed picture.
Osbaldstone of Wood Mackenzie says for his part that the 50% target does not mean that the technology has fallen completely out of favor, noting that in 2019 the French government instructed EDF to investigate the possibility of six new reactors to build on three sites. ‘ The utility, he added, would ‘respond by mid-2021’.
The challenges of carbon dioxide
The International Energy Agency states that “nuclear power has historically been one of the largest contributors to carbon-free electricity worldwide”, adding that it also “has significant potential to contribute to the carbon-free sector”.
It should be noted, however, that although the IEA says it produces carbon-free electricity, many people view nuclear power as a non-renewable source. This is because they claim that uranium, the metal important for generating nuclear power, will eventually run out.
The Carbon Trust’s leverage told CNBC that the level of investment needed to reduce energy supply is ‘massive’ for any economy.
And while the cost of renewable technologies such as solar photovoltaic wind and onshore and offshore wind has enjoyed a “significant reduction”, the same cannot be said for ‘new nuclear power’ where there has been a lack of consistent cost reduction.
“From a new construction perspective, there are risks of delays in construction and cost management, which in turn pose the risks to the transition costs and ultimately the energy costs to consumers,” Lever said.
“In addition, the potential high cost of decommissioning and waste disposal poses a significant risk in the future that nuclear power will become a relatively expensive and unsustainable technology compared to alternatives based on renewables.”
France wants to maintain a close relationship with nuclear power from now on, but its neighbor Germany is taking a different route.
In response to the Fukushima disaster in 2011, when a powerful earthquake and tsunami led to a collapse at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel developed plans to end the country’s nuclear power plants of 2022.
Just last week, Reuters reported that Germany had agreed to pay four companies – Vattenfall, RWE, E.ON and EnBW – for an early closure of their nuclear facilities nearly 2.6 billion euros (about $ 3.09 billion).
Criticism and concerns
While Macron seems to support nuclear power, it goes without saying that the technology does not benefit everyone.
Critics include Greenpeace. “Nuclear power is considered a solution to our energy problems, but in reality it is complicated and extremely expensive to build,” reads the website of the environmental organization.
“It also creates large amounts of hazardous waste,” it adds. “Renewable energy is cheaper and can be installed quickly. Together with battery storage, it can produce the power we need and reduce our emissions.”
The global picture
While governments around the world want to move away from fossil fuels and to renewable energy sources, the debate over the role of nuclear power in the planet’s energy mix will continue.
Just last month, Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Bill Gates told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin that nuclear power would be “absolutely” politically acceptable again. Gates is also the founder and chairman of TerraPower, a company that focuses on nuclear innovation.
Is the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy possible without nuclear energy?
“Any source of low emissions, such as nuclear power, can obviously play a role in the energy transition,” Wood Mackenzie’s Osbaldstone said before setting out the next challenges.
“But the cost of nuclear power is high, but the technology requires strong political support and regulatory frameworks in host countries,” he added, explaining that generators’ are typically large and relatively inflexible in operation – these features reduce the number of possible applications for nuclear power. . “
New technologies, including small modular reactors, or SMRs, could create a way to address these shortcomings, which could potentially open up a larger role for the resource. But SMRs currently remain very much on the drawing board. ‘