Finanz und Wirtschaft comments today:
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France has no coal, no gas, no oil - so no choice: That may be, in short, the Cartesian logic behind Emmanuel Macron's announcement that France will build new nuclear power plants. In any case, it is a clever move with a view to the presidential election in five months' time. Macron has not yet officially announced his candidacy, but there is no doubt that he is aiming for a second term and that he has a good chance of being re-elected.
His current move signals to the people that security of supply is a top priority and that it will be tackled; at the same time, Macron shows where he sees the ideal route to decarbonisation. This «Paris Gambit», to stay in chess jargon, is Gaullism pure et major, and this alone proves that Macron is up to date like hardly any other statesman in Europe (at best Boris Johnson, who admittedly also relies on nuclear power; do not be fooled by his flaunted frivolity).
In his declaration on the energy strategy, Macron said in no uncertain terms that independence and sovereignty were at stake: France definitely does not want to take the risk of being vitally dependent on imports of electricity. This is exactly in line with the nuclear policy that Charles de Gaulle initiated in liberated France as early as 1945 - the thunder of the Second World War, especially the two explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki - still echoed. After that, research was carried out in the nuclear sector, largely with a view to civilian use, but not much was done in the Fourth Republic in terms of industry or even more militarily.
After his long “traversée du desert”, the twelve years away from power, de Gaulle returned in 1958 and established the Fifth Republic, which was focused on the president, to suit his taste. It immediately revived France's hitherto half-hearted nuclear policy, primarily with a view to military use: the Soviets tested their first nuclear missile in 1949, and the British in 1952. France stood there naked, so to speak, depending in an emergency on the benevolence of the unloved Anglo-Saxons.
De Gaulle's political guiding star was gone from the start, when he decided in 1940 for the resistance in exile in London instead of the collaboration in Vichy, until the end of France's independence and honor; As old-fashioned as it may sound today, it was so successful. Thanks to de Gaulle's determination, France, the loser of the war, miraculously made it to the table of victorious powers and as a veto power in the United Nations Security Council.
In order to show the weight necessary to maintain this status, from the point of view of the general, and objectively plausible, it was essential to arm France with nuclear weapons. National security and independence, influence as a great power and international respect - these big goals needed the little atoms.
After all, France had a long tradition in nuclear research: Henri Becquerel and the Curie family - Marie and Pierre Curie, their daughter Irène Joliot-Curie and her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie - were all Nobel Prize winners in physics and chemistry, respectively. Before the outbreak of World War II, France had also begun to clarify the military potential of nuclear fission. The French explorers were active in Montreal during the war; the Americans did not allow them to participate in the Manhattan project in Los Alamos.
At that time, de Gaulle's directives were quickly put into practice. The first test was carried out in the Algerian desert at the beginning of 1960. «Hourra pour la France! Depuis ce matin, elle est plus forte et plus fière », de Gaulle congratulated his Defense Minister Pierre Messmer. During the Cold War, which threatened to get hot in those years, at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, France now had a "force de dissuasion" at its disposal, frightening enough to deter the Soviet leadership from gambling games in Western Europe. From 1959 de Gaulle withdrew France's troops step by step from the military command structure of NATO. The republic no longer relied on the American nuclear umbrella; it had its own.
There was also progress in the civilian sector; In 1963, the first French nuclear power plant fed electricity into the grid. Today France operates 56 reactors at 18 locations. The last kiln so far went online in 1999; The Flamanville nuclear power plant has been under construction since 2007, which is obviously not making any headway and is becoming more and more expensive (quasi a Berlin Airport 2.0 on the Norman coast). France's electricity consumption has long been geared towards nuclear power from head to toe: 70% of the electricity comes from nuclear generation.
Replacing these enormous capacities - only the USA and China have larger ones - with wind and solar energy alone is more science fiction than science. In Switzerland, by the way, the share of nuclear power is still around a third. Furthermore, it should not be forgotten that after the Kaiseraugst project was abandoned in 1988, the Swiss energy companies bought substantial subscription rights from Électricité de France. One bon mot is right: Kaiseraugst was built in France.
Macron's reactor renaissance ultimately follows de Gaulle's highest maxim of securing national freedom of action, updated with a European perspective, but the Élysée will always reserve the last word. States don't have friends, they have interests - this frosty formula of the legendary “grand Charles” still applies in Paris, only garnished with an “inclusive” (isn't that what they say today?) EU commitment.
When and where and with what output the new series of nuclear power plants will go online is still open, but if the project works to some extent, the country will probably cope with the foreseeable electricity shortage in Europe better than, namely, Germany, by far its most important neighbor . The Merkel government, which is now gradually dwindling, hastily announced its exit in 2011 after the reactor accident in Fukushima. The dubious German turn away from nuclear production, stupidly just at the same time as the actually correct exit from coal-fired power generation, followed, as the only other country, Switzerland (Belgium fluctuates). Where else Bern acts more soberly than Berlin.
It will not be necessary to explain to Emmanuel Macron that an electricity croesus France will win over an electricity beggar Germany at Postur. From the point of view of Switzerland, where word got around now, very late, that electricity is becoming increasingly scarce, under these circumstances it might be worth considering buying the French Rafale fighter plane instead of an American jet; why not a diplomatic bargain with an electricity clause? Of course, it would be even more reassuring to expand our own generation, massively, and without blinkers when it comes to nuclear power.
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https://www.fuw.ch/article/macrons-r...gaulles-geist/