As Europe’s energy crisis and climate concerns swing momentum back behind nuclear power, the plans to build new reactor plants in France should have been a boost for an industry emerging from two decades of political reproval and dried up order books.
Instead, France’s nuclear renaissance, one of the most ambitious of the revivals contemplated by a growing number of governments, has been fraught with concerns. Critics question whether constructors still have the knowhow to build reactors and deliver them on time, and whether they can find enough people to get the work done.
“We’d been told for years: please, prepare yourselves to shut reactors,” Jean-Bernard Lévy, the outgoing chief executive of state-controlled French nuclear site operator EDF, told a conference in Paris in August. He was flanked by a government minister as he delivered his rebuke and warned of a lack of qualified construction staff.