SpaceWar.com - Your World At War
France pushes nuclear energy, raising German hackles
Brussels, Dec 19 (AFP) Dec 19, 2023
France stood up for nuclear power as part of the EU's low-carbon energy mix on Tuesday, raising the hackles of anti-nuclear Germany.

"We rather believe that this is an expensive experiment," Germany's minister for economic affairs and climate action, Sven Giegold, said as he arrived for a Brussels meeting of EU energy and transport ministers.

On Tuesday, France signed a nuclear cooperation memorandum with Sweden. Stockholm, like Paris, is banking on using nuclear power to meet its climate goals.

The memorandum "will let us tighten our links on the issue of nuclear power," France's energy minister, Agnes Pannier-Runacher, said after signing the document with her Swedish counterpart, Ebba Busch.

"We must continue to make nuclear power one of the elements of our energy policy to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions," she said.

France's fleet of 56 reactors -- which supplies the country with 70 percent of its electricity -- has received a boost after the EU's member states agreed that atomic power should be part of the bloc's energy mix going forward.

Its inclusion in a reform of the EU's energy market, which is shifting from fossil-fuel dependency to a greener, more renewable one, underlined both Paris's lobbying efforts and urgency over energy security sparked by Russia's war in Ukraine.

Germany, though, has phased out its nuclear power plants and is under an unexpected budget squeeze that is crimping spending. Its ruling coalition also needs to keep Green partners on side.

Giegold, a Green politician, said the use of nuclear power is "a sovereign decision of member states" though he argued renewable energy sources should be used instead.

"We need very flexible and supplemental resources, and that means that so far nuclear technology is not ready to deliver that," he said.

He also expressed concerns about nuclear sectors in France and other countries benefiting from state subsidies whereas Germany is facing a spending squeeze because of a court decision crimping its budget.

"This needs to be controlled to avoid negative fallout" for the EU single market, Giegold said.

Pannier-Runacher, for her part, said that France's debt-laden EDF company, which builds and operates nuclear plants, was "competitive" and that was "a benefit for the French, a benefit for Europe".

She said money for EDF was "not a budgetary mechanism... and therefore not an aid mechanism", and that France had no "hidden plan" of massive state subsidies for it.

Sweden's Busch said the COP28 climate conference that just wrapped up in Dubai underlined "the phasing out (of) the dependence on fossil energies but also the comeback of nuclear".

France, she said, "played a big role in this" and, with its help, Sweden was now poised to make "a huge comeback as a nuclear power nation," she said.


ADVERTISEMENT




Space News from SpaceDaily.com
UK opens competitive bid for GBP 75 million orbital cleanup mission
UK invests $191 mn in European satellite firm Eutelsat
Bearings Used in Space Technologies: Engineering for the Final Frontier

24/7 Energy News Coverage
Atomic 6 receives 2M Space Force award to advance next generation solar arrays
ESA and Neuraspace develop autonomous satellite navigation technologies
Planet secures 240 million euro satellite services contract with German government

Military Space News, Nuclear Weapons, Missile Defense
London, Paris tighten nuclear bond over US, Russia concerns
Iran says cooperation with UN nuclear watchdog will take 'new form'
Six killed in massive Russian drone, missile attack across Ukraine

24/7 News Coverage
Ancient zircon data reveals tectonic origin of Earth's first continental crust
Autonomous sub explores unexplored trench depths to reveal critical mineral clues
Europe launches first geostationary atmospheric sounder to boost extreme weather forecasts



All rights reserved. Copyright Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.