The idea of implementing an SMR on the site of the Cordemaian coal plant launched by Christelle Morançais, President the Republicans of the Loire Country Region, causes concern.
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“they finish their EPR in Flamanville before trying to do something elsewhere.” The sentence cuts short to any discussion: no question for Nathan, cook of 37 years installed in Cordemais – commune located 35 kilometers at West from Nantes (Loire-Atlantique) – to live near a nuclear reactor, even of modest size.
The debate has resurfaced after the president the Republicans of the Loire Countries Region, Christelle Morançais, announced in October his wish to see a small modular reactor (SMR, mini-nuclear reactor), in place and Place de la Cordemais EDF Centrale, and condemned to disappear by 2026. Bouncing “France 2030” of President Macron – Given the Nuclear Party – M Me Morançais sees In this file “an issue of energy sovereignty for the territory”.
A few months of the presidential election, even if the prospect of a culmination remains very distant, the proposal does not fail to cleave. ELU Regional and MEP Ecologist of Maine-et-Loire, Matthieu Orphan denounces a project “from another time”. “Consider a nuclear reconversion of the site, which is more than 2035, only repel the real issues: working on new skills, bet on sobriety and energy efficiency, investing to develop renewable energies,” he.
The left is on the same wavelength. Johanna Rolland, mayor PS of Nantes, says “unfavorable on the bottom as on the form” to such an option, even if “the country can not do without nuclear tomorrow”. M me Rolland also deplores “the absence of any consultation on such a sensitive subject”.
A project “Not realistic”
More astonishingly, the fervent nuclear advocate as part of the energy mix, the member rallied by the presidential majority François de Rugy, also sweeps the idea of implementing a Cordemais SMR. “It’s not at all the subject of the moment,” says the elected official, also regional adviser, “I do not find that interesting to maintain illusions with employees, local elected officials, and to give rise to possible tensions on the site for a project that is not realistic “. The acceptability of the file seems like problematic, remarks M. de Rugy, who does not fail to recall the twenty years of clashes that led to abandonment of the Carnet Centrale project in the Loire estuary, in 1997.
In local elected officials, the tone is different. Daniel Guillé, Mayor of Cordemais, says “closed to any solution” to offer a future to the 330 employees of the plant. “What needs to be found, it is economic activity and jobs on these 130 hectares industrialized, exposes the elected, without a political label but claiming a left sensitivity. It can therefore be an interest in this project. . Especially since it will have to continue to produce electricity with pilotable means. “The Edile, which has not been” or informed “of the initiative of Ms. Morançais, entrusts that He expected “a tolerated” in his municipality but “for the moment, he notes, it’s calm”.
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