Energy

Experts Think France’s Plans To Close ‘Up To 17 Nuclear Reactors’ By 2025 Won’t End Well

(Shutterstock/thieury)

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Andrew Follett Energy and Science Reporter
Font Size:

Experts worry France’s plans to replace “up to 17 nuclear reactors” with wind and solar power by 2025 could be extremely costly and make the country vastly more dependent on imported energy.

“It certainly will decrease their independence and force France to relay more on energy imports,” Lake Barrett, former deputy director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “It will be costly and work against the new government’s desire to improve the French economy. Higher energy prices will make it more difficult for businesses to expand and reduce high unemployment.”

French President Emmanuel Macron plans to reduce the amount of electricity it gets from nuclear energy from 75 to 50 percent by 2025. There are 58 operating nuclear reactors, and low-end estimates put the cost of phasing out 17 reactors at $248 billion by 2035.

The potential reduction in nuclear power would be a huge break from France’s traditional energy policy. The country invested heavily in nuclear since the 1973 oil crisis with the goal of increasing its energy independence.

“An election has up-ended everything, which is very bad for both energy policy and climate policy,” Dr. Jeff Terry, a professor of nuclear physics involved in energy research at the Illinois Institute of Technology, told TheDCNF. “It is sad to see what’s happening in France. They have very good and very safe nuclear programs.”

France’s production of nuclear power has been steadily falling largely due to a law passed by the French government last November intended to prop up solar power. The legislation could force Electricite de France (EDF), the country’s state-controlled utility, to close 18 to 20 of its 58 nuclear reactors by 2025.

“Whether they build solar or import coal power from Germany, France is still going to have a net increase in carbon emissions and that doesn’t help anybody,” Terry said. “This is almost purely political. I really hope they reconsider and I really hope in the US we look at this as an example of what not to do.”

France’s nuclear phaseout stems from a political pact made by former French President François Hollande during the 2012 election to prop up his alliance with the anti-nuclear Green party. Environmental groups endorsed the plan as a method of reducing the amount of nuclear waste.

“These large NGOs aren’t environmental groups anymore,” Terry said. “The moment you cross over into anti-science behavior you stop being an environmental group. We have the technology to fix this, but thanks to them we’re choosing not to use it.”

“Environmentalism requires you to understand science and the science shows that nuclear is important in the fight against climate change,” Terry said. “Now they’re all about socialism, not true environmentalism.”

Other energy experts argue replacing nuclear reactors with solar panels and wind turbines could make global warming worse.

“France apparently thinks they can replace carbon-free nuclear energy with carbon-free renewables in a major way,” David Blee, executive director of the Nuclear Infrastructure Council, told TheDCNF. “That’s a high bar under any scenario but fanciful in less than 10 years and it can only happen at two to three times the cost of the baseload nuclear they already have paid for.”

France’s nuclear industry is currently one of the most advanced in the world. The country is currently building some of the world’s most advanced reactors.

“The French reactors have run well and have been very productive over the last decades,” Barrett said. “Replacing them for political statements will be very expensive for the French people in both the production employment area and as consumers.”

It is far from clear that renewable energy like wind and solar power can be expanded enough to make up for losing the nuclear reactors.

“Renewables promise a lot, but due to the intermittent power generation there has to be a large spinning reserve to fill in the load demand when the wind dies and sun sets,” Barrett said. “Battery technology is still very expensive, so imported fossil fuels, or imported fossil electricity, will likely fill the gap.  Exactly what they have promised not to do in the Paris accord.  But talk is cheap, especially when the burden falls on others later on.”

The amount of additional electricity wind and solar would need to generate to fill the gap left by the 17 shuttered reactors is enormous. France is more reliant on nuclear power than any other country in the world, as it currently operates 63,200 megawatts of nuclear capacity, according to the World Nuclear Association. To put that number in perspective, the U.S. only has 100,350 megawatts of nuclear capacity even though it has almost five times the population of France.

“Any major expansion of renewables is likely to face strong public opposition given the land mass required and the not so favorable aesthetics of wind and solar in large clumps,” Blee said. “It will also come at great expense to French electricity consumers who will be paying a lot more for their power with no net gain in clean energy.”

Shutting down reactors is a major policy shift as reactors and fuel products and services are a major French export. The country is the world’s largest net exporter of electricity and mainly sells to Italy, Great Britain, Switzerland, Belgium and Spain — it earns France about $3.38 billion annually.

The reactors aren’t being shutdown because they’re expensive, but for purely political reasons, according to Barrett.

“They are being shutdown for political reasons that are disguised as economic reasons,” Barrett said. “Refurbishment of older reactors, although somewhat expensive from an early cash flow perspective, are very economic over the longer haul.

“Sweden did similar political moves after Three Mile Island accident in the early 1980s, but reality caused them to walk back their aggressive anti-nuclear shutdown rhetoric,” Barrett said. “Germany is now doing it as well, but Germany is very affluent with a strong economy and can afford to throw away billions of euros chasing the renewable dream.”

EDF owns most of France’s reactors, but the company has serious financial problems and many of its projects have credit ratings below investment grade. The company is more than $40 billion in debt. Shares in EDF have fallen 55 percent over the past year, reducing its market capitalization to only $23.6 billion.

Follow Andrew on Twitter

Send tips to andrew@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel