suspected bureaucracy. In a country that concocts a law as soon as a new problem appears, we now come to legislate to fight against administrative slowness resulting from previous laws. In terms of energy, to guarantee the social acceptability of a technology that scares, nuclear, or that of wind turbines accused of spoiling the landscape, we have stacked the legal guarantees which are as many entry doors for opponents of all kinds.
In the case of the wind of the wind of Saint-Nazaire, the first in French sea, it was necessary to go through seven years of procedure before building the installation in just three years. Ditto in nuclear. The watchword is therefore launched and, in two weeks, two “acceleration” texts tumble in Parliament. One for renewable energies, the other for nuclear.
In the latter case, however, we will have resolved only a small part of the problem, there are many obstacles. The first concerns manufacturing times. Nuclear reactors have become so complex objects that it is difficult to build them. The reactor start -up horizon that the law presented in the Senate this Tuesday, January 17 is supposed to accelerate is around 2040. Twenty years for six reactors! As a result of this time and this sophistication, the costs fly away. We are talking about 50 billion euros for these first machines.
European industrial geography
As a result, the cost of energy produced is now at least twice that of renewable energies. From now on, wind turbines in the North Sea represent capacity ten to twenty times higher than those of these reactors, even taking into account the intermittent.
All of the projects planned by 2050 in this region would, according to The Economist, represent nearly 260 capacity gigawatts, the equivalent of what is appropriate to feed 200 million Europeans. An emergence which could upset the industrial geography of the continent, like what the regions of dams or coal have done during the XIX e
é> century.
major technological uncertainties remain both on the side of the atom (safety, waste, simplicity) as on the side of renewables (storage). Nuclear therefore has an interest in accelerating its transformation if it wants to stay in the race.