> That's not even remotely true.
It is though. For CEA experts at least. And considering what those experts did to the EPR, i'm pretty sure they are not as "pro-edf" or "pro-nuclear" as the Green tell they are.
> Fessenheim was a huge security risk and would not have passed any security checks in a country not as fanatically pro-nuclear as France.
You're dissing CEA engineers and physicists here.
> That says: It was in an seismic active zone
This reason is bullshit. Fessenhein is a PWR reactor, unless you have something like 7 on the Richter scale, the reactor will likely just hold. On a 7, you have leakage risks, and maybe on a nine you'll get a meltdown?
Do you think its likely to get a 7 or more there?
> unprotected against plane crashes or terror attacks.
True, plane crashes are not an issue though, unless you know exactly where the core or the pool is (one is a much much bigger issue than the other obviously). And to engage security mesures you need to either: push a big button, or cut electricity. Once the grid is down, there is no way to make the core explode, and if you take more than 30 minutes to put a bomb on it, it probably won't even meltdown. To reengage the reactor you need knowledge, so a sabotage is still possible.
> There also were a bunch of accidents.
True, and bad ones. Hiring contractors is good for us, earning that much doing pretty much nothing, but ultimately bad for the company, especially when you need to keep competency at a high level. Not the only nuclear plant in France where incompetency reigns from what i heard.
> Those old reactor designs weren't safe.
Untrue, but true for fessenheim. No commercial French reactor active right now are as unsafe as let's say Fukushima, because our Gen2 were that much better (as were the US's). Not as well designed as CANDUC type, but PWR are stable and do have passive protection against a chain reaction or a leak. Also, you can just move the core out and voila, no more nuclear reaction. Anyway. The second wave was improved upon "thanks" to the TMI incident, and even older reactors got better passive risk reduction upgrades and better detection.
But, Fessenheim did had a lot of troubles (and by troubles, i mean incidents from human origin), and while the cuve could probably last another 30 to 40 years, the PWR tech also have big wear and tear effect on surrounding equipements. The CEA accounted for this in their rapport, and precognized a long downtime to put thing in order.