Contested, the merger of the two institutions responsible for nuclear safety in France had been challenged in April by Parliament: the Elysée returned to the charge on Wednesday by announcing a new bill to this effect “by the fall”.

This operation would bring together in a new “major independent authority” the Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), a safety expert, and the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), responsible for decisions on power plants, according to a press release from the Presidency of the Republic.

This authority, “whose financial and human resources would be reinforced (…) will make it possible to adapt nuclear safety in the face of the three challenges of the revival” of civil nuclear power desired by Emmanuel Macron, according to the same source.

These “challenges” are “the extension of the existing fleet”, the “construction of new EPRs”, new generation reactors, and “the development of small innovative modular reactors”, listed the executive.

The Nuclear Policy Council (CPN) meeting Wednesday at the Elysée “confirmed the government’s desire to move forward in this direction by ensuring that all the missions of ASN and IRSN are preserved”, according to the same source.

The CPN has therefore “assigned the mission to the Minister of Energy Transition (Agnès Pannier-Runacher, editor’s note) to initiate consultations with stakeholders and parliamentarians with a view to preparing a bill by the fall”, added the presidency.

This announcement came a week after the authors of a parliamentary report had recommended the merger of the two institutions, in the face of the expected increase in the workload in monitoring the power plants, present and future.

The reform, wanted by the Elysée, was rejected in April by Parliament, against a backdrop of criticism of the method and concerns for transparency and the quality of the expertise.

Since the announcement of the presidential intentions, the employees of the IRSN but also nuclear experts, parliamentarians, are upwind against this project of regrouping: they see a loss of independence, competence and capacity of expression of the experts.

Last week, the IRSN inter-union had in particular described the parliamentary report as “partial and biased”.

After multiple round trips, Parliament adopted the nuclear stimulus bill in May. But despite the will of the government, a section providing for a reform of nuclear safety had been rejected the previous month.

At the time, the Ministry of Energy Transition had judged that it was “too early” to decide on the continuation of this reform, without therefore burying it definitively.

At the end of the Nuclear Policy Council on Wednesday, the presidency also revealed that it had chosen the Bugey nuclear site (Ain) to host the third pair of future new generation EPR2 reactors.

The Penly (Seine-Maritime) and Gravelines (Nord) sites had already been designated for the construction of two EPR2s each.

Mr. Macron announced in February 2022, two months before being re-elected, a vast recovery plan for civilian nuclear power, with the construction of 6 to 14 new generation reactors by 2050.

“The location of the first phase of the EPR2 construction program has now been stopped,” noted the Elysée. EDF had mentioned either Bugey or Tricastin (Drôme) for this third installation.

“Technical studies and analyzes will continue on the Tricastin site with a view to hosting future nuclear reactors”, according to the press release.

The president of the Departmental Council of Drôme, Marie-Pierre Mouton, expressed in a press release her “very great disappointment”, on behalf of Tricastin and “of an entire living area extended to four departments and three regions”, acknowledging that the technical file of Bugey “had a small head start”. “We are ready to welcome the next next generation EPRs which will necessarily be programmed very quickly”, she launched however.

Earlier Wednesday, the CEO of EDF, Luc Rémont, told deputies that his recently renationalized company would have to boost its investments to 25 billion euros per year (against 16.39 billion in 2022).

This is the level of investment required, according to Mr. Rémont, to meet the group’s many industrial challenges, starting with the construction of the new EPR2s.

07/19/2023 23:38:01 –         Paris (AFP) –         © 2023 AFP