Fessenheim: one year from closure, retraining raises questions
By AFP the 04.01.2018
The government and local players will soon be looking into the reconversion of the site of the Fessenheim nuclear power plant (Haut-Rhin), which is still vague, which should stop definitively within a year.
The Secretary of State at the Ministry of Ecological and Solidarity Transition Sébastien Lecornu announced Thursday that he would go to Alsace on January 18 to set up a "steering committee" on the conversion of the plant after having already brought together local elected officials at the end of November,.
This committee must bring together local elected officials, State services, EDF and representatives of economic players. "We have a lot of very concrete working avenues," Sébastien Lecornu assured RTL.
On site, the wait is great while the power plant directly employs 850 EDF employees and around 350 permanent employees of service provider companies, not to mention the number of indirect and induced jobs.
We await "financial compensation and how to recreate 2.000 jobs quickly," said AFP Claude Brender, mayor (without label) of the municipality of Fessenheim.
The town of 2.400 inhabitants "lives thanks to the power plant", recalls the mayor. And local authorities intend to be compensated for the 15 million euros in annual tax revenue that will be lost.
- "Nothing concrete" -
Several projects to convert the site have been mentioned in the past, such as the possible installation of an electric car factory for the American Tesla, a battery factory project or the creation of a pilot plant dismantling site .
We are also talking about a research center, the installation of a gas power plant in the region, or even a large solar farm, an area in which EDF recently announced its ambitions.
"For the moment there is nothing concrete, we are at the beginning of the beginning", regrets the mayor Claude Brender.
The calendar is pressing, however: Fessenheim, dean of French nuclear power plants, must close when the EPR reactor in Flamanville (Manche) goes into service, which EDF plans to do between late 2018 and early 2019. Will then open along dismantling site ...
France cannot produce more nuclear electricity than it currently does: the obligation to comply with the current ceiling is a requirement of the energy transition law passed in 2015.
The country has a fleet of 58 reactors and nuclear represents around 75% of its electricity production. But it is planned to reduce this figure to 50% by 2030 or 2035, so that other plants will have to close.
- "A symbol" -
Fessenheim will therefore be the first to close, a commitment from previous President François Hollande taken over by his successor Emmanuel Macron.
"It has become a symbol," said Nicolas Goldberg of Colombus consulting, AFP.
"Fessenheim has crystallized many things: it is the oldest, it is on the Franco-German border, there has been a re-evaluation of the seismic risk in the area and in addition, there is one of the reactors at shutdown for a while ", recalls the expert.
Indeed, the Fessenheim 2 reactor is in prolonged shutdown following an anomaly on the lower shell of a steam generator. A problem related to irregularities at the forge of the Areva nuclear group in Le Creusot (Saône-et-Loire).
So many difficulties that made the dean of power plants a priority target for environmentalists.
"We must stop procrastinating: the Fessenheim plant must close," said Alix Mazounie, energy campaign manager at Greenpeace France.
"Its lack of security and safety, its obsolescence, but also its low rate of electricity production are all criteria that make its closure essential," she said.
"The German and Luxembourg governments have repeatedly expressed strong concerns over the risk of a power plant accident in recent years," Alix Mazounie told AFP.
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