Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually France knows how to build them cheaper and quicker. Their whole nuclear industry (reactors and all) cost just €228 billion. And they built 50+ reactors in just 15 years. They know how this works, and so do we: standardize a design, build lots of them, in overlapping lots so experience accumulates and knowledge gained from earlier builds can be passed on and applied to newer builds. This also worked for Germa…
I was a bit confused about the Mitterand gov't claim, that seems to be a Hollande gov't thing from 2014. In particular after 2011 (with Fukushima on the minds of Europeans... not to debate how much those concerns made sense), and part of policy alignments with the socialist party and the greens Found this 2023 article with Hollande not feeling the need to apologize for this policy[0]. I would like to point out that h…
Yeah, a lot of the world panicked after Fukushima, for understandable, but in the end non-factual reasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiophobia
And yes, of course they wanted to replace nuclear with renewables, what else were they going to replace it with?
But that doesn't work. See Germany. Which is why that plan has now been laid to rest.
Without shutting off Fessenheim, Flamanville 3 would have been illegal under the Hollande law:
"On 9 April 2017, the plant was ordered to close after the Flamanville 3 unit comes online, expected to begin operation in late 2018, later reported to 2019, keeping the French nuclear generation capacity below the legal limit of 63.2 GWe." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fessenheim_Nuclear_Power_Plant...
And there was also strong political opposition to Fessenheim. The Fessenheim closure was not technical.
The French reactors are based on Westinghouse designs, and those reactors are currently being extended to 80 year lifespan in the US. So I don't see why they shouldn't be capable of the same lifetime in France, though the French do drive them a bit harder.