A page of history is turned – in bitterness, with the feeling of a gigantic mess. On September 1, 2023, the Fessenheim nuclear power plant will officially cease to exist, to pass into the hands of the authorities responsible for its dismantling. The end of an epic started in 1977, which will have offered the country, in just over forty years, 440 TWh of low-carbon electricity… Or approximately the annual electricity consumption of France.

The reasons for this closure, we now know everything: decided by François Hollande as part of an electoral alliance with the Greens, confirmed by Emmanuel Macron for the same reasons, the central, judged all the authorities, regulatory as independent, would have been able to shoot for at least another ten years. Of the tragic climatic consequences of this closure, nothing is ignored either: to compensate for the loss, French companies had to “erase” part of their production, the coal-fired power stations still in operation increase theirs, a new gas-fired power station, 40 times more polluting, opened in Landivisiau, and a coal-fired one, the largest in Germany, on the other side of the Rhine.

On the ground, in the Haut-Rhin, nearly 1,900 local jobs have disappeared, and the flamboyant promises of retraining declaimed by Élisabeth Borne have faded into silence… The clearing of the future EcoRhéna economic zone, supposed to revitalize the territory, just started. A crawler excavator manufacturer is expected there in 2025.

The atmosphere was heavy when the members of the social and economic committee (CSE) of the plant gathered for the last time, at the beginning of the summer. Unit director, members of management, staff and union representatives… Everyone paid tribute – “you could hear the flies flying”. They would have liked to mark the occasion. Let the press, one last time, come hear them. But there was nobody. Looking ahead to September 1, on that day they attempted to write the final chapter – the one that would close these forty-three years of history. A representative of the CFDT read a text, in dead silence. It is this text that, at the request of former employees, we are publishing.

“August 31, 2023, last day of existence of the CNPE Fessenheim: Nuclear power generation center. Last day after more than forty years of operation. And for this last CSE, we are not going to make an “assessment”… we are going to present the note to you. The bill. Today, forty years are coming to an end with the destruction of this tool of production, in an almost general indifference. Only the anti-nuclears rub their hands in it… But do they have a brain?

2020, shutdown of the two Fessenheim reactors, France loses 1,800 MW of non-carbon energy. The outcome of a decision taken by a government which needed anti-nuclear weapons to come to power, and confirmed by another government which did not need them… Have they progressed, twenty years after the decision to destroy Superphenix, period? organ of a dismal political saga that lasted several years? With Superphenix, 1,200 MW disappeared. Did they have a brain?

Fessenheim and Superphénix now total 3,000 MW missing from the network. But that’s not all ! In twenty years, how many thermal power plants have been destroyed? Twenty-six in total. Here they are :

2003 : Le Havre, 125 MW

2004: Montereau, 750 MW, Loire-sur-Rhône, 250 MW

2005: Champagne-sur-Oise, 250 MW, Vaires-sur-Marne, 500 MW

2006: Pelissier, 250 MW

2009: Martigues, 250 MW

2011: Martigues, 250 MW

2012: Le Havre, 250 MW, Martigues, 250 MW

2013: Gardanne, 250 MW

2014: Le Havre, 125 MW, Blenod, 500 MW.

2015, hecatombe: Saint-Avold, 468 MW, Hornaing, 250 MW, Lucy, 270 MW, Bouchain, 250 MW, Le Havre, 330 MW, La Maxe, 500 MW, Vitry, 500 MW

2016: Aramon, 1,400 MW

2017 : Cordemais, 700 MW, Porcheville, 2 400 MW

2018 : Cordemais, 700 MW

Let’s be honest, 2018 also saw the commissioning of a production unit on Gardanne 4: 150 MW of biomass to replace the 250 destroyed five years earlier. And let’s not forget, ironically, the commissioning of Datteln 4 in 2020 by our German friends, international champions of the energy transition – they too have a brain – with its 1,100 MW of the worst coal on earth , lignite, which comes “advantageously” to replace the 1,800 destroyed in Fessenheim.

But it is not finished…

2021: Gardanne 5, destruction of 595 MW

2021: Le Havre, 600 MW – Plant destroyed after investing 160 million euros in it. Do we have to have a brain!

Finally, 2022: shutdown of Saint-Avold, 1,478 MW. And the good joke is to have it restarted six months later because of the energy crisis… Some jokes, however, are not really funny. It is certain that with a tiny bit of brain, we could have suspected that by dint of destroying the means of production, we were going to run out of energy…

Let’s be honest until the end, the shutdown coal and fuel plants have been replaced by less polluting plants: combined cycle gas (and since it’s “natural gas”, it sounds green!), turbines combustion (we no longer say “gas turbine”, the word was dirty…), and biomass (as soon as we put “bio” in a word, it becomes a panacea, as if biomass did not produce gas to greenhouse effect…). A total of 14,698 MW destroyed and 5,812 cleaner MW created, any 7 year old can tell you that the account is not there.

So today, 3,000 MW non-carbon is missing from the grid for political reasons, and 9,000 MW of thermal flame is missing from the grid. 9,000 MW, destroyed in the name of what? Ecology, because as everyone knows, coal pollutes… What’s the point of having a brain, if it’s to stop at this discovery?

Everyone knows that coal, “it pollutes”… On the other hand, few people know how much it pollutes. In 2003, electricity production from coal-fired power stations accounted for 4% of EDF’s annual production… So it didn’t pollute a lot, but it was present when we needed it. And few people know that if all the producers supply 99% of the demand, the little missing 1% brings the whole system down. There is no more margin, hence the current energy crisis, current but lasting.

Few people have understood that the right question is not to know if coal pollutes… The right question is to know if it pollutes more or if it pollutes less than what we are going to put in place. However, the year 2022 is that of the beginning of the energy crisis (a crisis which, let us recall, began before the invasion of Ukraine by Russia) and as soon as possible cuts were announced, the large DIY surfaces have been robbed of their generators… 12,000 MW of nuclear and coal destroyed, to burn what instead? Gasoline. Do we have a brain?

For twenty years we have been led to believe that nuclear energy is an energy of the past, that we must make a “transition” towards the energies of the future, known as “renewable”. When you know that a wind turbine produces 20% of its time… If my baker was powered by a wind turbine, he would make bread on Monday, but not on Tuesday, not on Wednesday, not on Thursday or Friday. That’s right, 20% of the time. This is the energy of “the future”…

As for photovoltaics, any 5-year-old child can explain to you that at night there is no sun, and strangely, at night, that’s when we turn on the lights… You have to know that the January 10, 2023, the National Assembly adopted at first reading a bill to increase the installed capacity in wind power to 40,000 MW – for comparison, nuclear production is 63,000 MW – and in photovoltaics to 80,000 MW. Do they have a brain?

How can you live in a society immature enough to slowly kill the planet without being ashamed?

How not to be ashamed of the successive governments which killed French industry, sold our heritage and our wealth to foreign interests – let us recall, for example, the lamentable Alstom affair, sold to our American “friends”, and that is only an example. As a reminder, in 2013 – only ten years ago – France was the 5th economic power in the world, in 2018, it was the 6th, in 2021, the 7th… and it is not going to stop. In any case, it is not by killing the nuclear industry that we will find wealth…

And above all, let’s not be naive about an alleged “nuclear revival in France”. The energy policy of a country like ours is designed for 50 years minimum, 100 years ideally; not 5 years, the length of a presidential term, let alone 5 months, the length of an election campaign. So a “nuclear revival” that kicks off with the shutdown of a nuclear power plant is a dubious irony…

How not to be ashamed of the management of EDF who failed to prevent this disaster? She fought though, but did she fight with enough conviction? Or did she live with so-called “inevitable” changes? The slogan of the 1970s was “in France we don’t have oil but we have ideas”. It is on this idea that we built the largest nuclear fleet in the world. In the 1990s, we began to destroy the means of production. In 2007, the big idea was to sell our production at cost price to our competitors, so that they could take our customers away from us…hence the appearance of a multitude of electricity sellers who only get rich without producing anything, on the backs of EDF, that is to say on the backs of the French. In biology, these are called parasites. Remember that in 2013, only ten years ago, individuals paid 12 cents per kWh for EDF, today 22 cents. Isn’t it time to hold all the powerful minds who led to this situation ?

Facing the anti-nuclear, did EDF fight with enough energy? Has its communications department been up to the challenge? When we know that today, and for several decades to come, only nuclear energy would have a chance to save the world from overheating… and the communication department was not able to make this clear? All she did was replace the plastic cups with mugs, and had us make the Climate Fresco. How can one do the Climate Mural and be satisfied with it, without being ashamed?

How could we present the group’s sobriety plan: “Turn off your light well, work in pairs in the same office to gain 10 watts of lighting, unplug your appliances properly on standby”… We destroyed 1,800 MW , but we’re going to make up for it by unplugging our coffee makers? How can we count woolen sweaters and install thermometers in offices without being ashamed?

Of course, everyone can tell themselves that we don’t have to be ashamed of the consequences of a closure that we didn’t want, that we even fought against. It is true, and moreover it would be wrong to accuse the management of the site of convenience, because this was not the case. Incidentally, we can note that she has made significant efforts with regard to the social plan – when it is good, it must be said. So what do we blame him for?

The management was not complacent about the closure of the site, it’s true, but it got used to it. Moving quickly from indignation to “big industrial issues”, proudly displaying at the entrance to the site “Succeeding the transition to decommissioning in complete safety and security” – transition, what a well-chosen word!

In short, it’s a bit like a funeral: afterwards, “life has to go on”, and we got used to it.

How not to be ashamed?

On September 1, 2023, the Fessenheim Nuclear Power Generation Center will definitively lose its legal existence, the site will then come under the control of the dismantling service. Fessenheim expires, and here is the bill. Who will pay it? »