AIX-EN-PROVENCE – France, which already produces up to 70 per cent of its electricity supply using nuclear power, has ambitions to ramp up its nuclear capacity amid a global green push.

       But its nuclear industry has seen better days and its revival efforts will likely face several curveballs.

       The challenges include ageing facilities in need of upgrading, a shrinking nuclear workforce, and the lack of consistent private sector investment in research and development, observers told The Straits Times.

       The country has 56 operational reactors.

       In 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron announced plans to build 14 new reactors by 2050 to meet the country’s growing energy needs, and extend the lifespan of some of its existing reactors.

       Currently, the average age of its reactors is 37 years old, and the country is hoping to extend this to at least 60 years.

       France has also committed to investing €1 billion (S$1.42 billion) in nuclear power by the end of this decade, particularly towards innovative small-scale reactors helmed by start-ups, according to media reports.

       Funding will also go into recruiting and training some 100,000 workers in the nuclear sector, and improving nuclear waste management.

       Countries around the world are now seeing a nuclear renaissance as they face pressure to decarbonise their economies and get the world to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

       Advocates of the contentious power source say that nuclear power’s availability and predictability have proven its importance amid soaring gas prices, whereas renewable energy is intermittent and can be difficult to store.

       Even with increased investments and greater political will, some are sceptical of France’s ability to facilitate a nuclear roll-out at such a scale, given that the country has not built new reactors since 1999.

       This has resulted in a shrinking nuclear workforce, with many leaving the industry as political support for nuclear power wavered over the years.

       Nuclear power lost its allure in the country following the Fukushima disaster in 2011. Former president Francois Hollande even wanted to shut down existing nuclear power plants, and reduce the share of nuclear power to 50 per cent by 2025.

       Additional costs also had to be incurred to raise the safety standards of France’s fleet of nuclear power plants.

       Mr Jon-Michael Murray, the programme director of non-profit organisation Terra Praxis, which looks to scale up the use of clean energy, said that while the shutdown of reactors did not happen, it signalled to all stakeholders in the energy industry that they should not invest in nuclear energy.

       Mr Jonathan Bruegel, power sector analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis Europe, said this could have led to France gradually losing its nuclear expertise over the years, with most commercial investments channelled to plant operations and maintenance, rather than the development of new technologies.

       He noted that France’s energy company EDF, and Orano, its multinational nuclear power firm, had undeniably lost their expertise in nuclear tech due to the lack of consistent R&D investment.

       While French research institutes, such as the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), still invest heavily in nuclear R&D, collaboration with the private sector is rather weak. As such, its strength in nuclear science has not translated into gains for the commercial nuclear-exporting sector, said Mr Bruegel.

       The talent gap was laid bare when EDF had to embark on a large-scale recruitment drive to fix the country’s ageing reactors in 2022.

       That year, dozens of France’s nuclear plants had to be taken offline for maintenance and last-minute emergency repairs, resulting in the country’s electricity generation from nuclear plants dipping to around 40 per cent.

       For the first time in decades, France had to import electricity from its neighbours.

       EDF estimated that the nuclear sector would need to hire between 10,000 and 15,000 workers a year over the next seven years to fulfil its nuclear aspirations, according to a Reuters article in 2022.

       Mr Clement Bouilloux, a market expert and territory manager for Montel Group, which provides energy market analytics, said that the nuclear workforce had shrunk a lot in the past 20 years.

       EDF has launched a new strategy over the past few years to hire more talent and develop internal competencies to maintain its own fleet of nuclear plants, among other needs. This had previously been outsourced, which hampered quick intervention during an unexpected event, Mr Bouilloux added.

       This issue is now being fixed, with plans in place to hire and train young people.

       “The first fruits of this effort are already visible with a now shorter maintenance time,” he said.

       Some experts are also sceptical of whether the new target of 14 new reactors by 2050 would be too ambitious, particularly as many of the plants would likely be European pressurised water reactors (EPR).

       These are a more advanced generation of reactors, developed mainly by French firms such as EDF, which incorporate increased safety measures, and are supposed to be more economical to build.

       France’s first EPR – in Flamanville, Normandy – is set to be fully operational and connected to the grid by the end of 2024, after 12 years of delays, from the design to the construction and across the entire spectrum. The cost of construction had also ballooned to €13.2 billion, around four times the initial €3.3 billion budget.

       Plants in China and Finland, built using the same technology, were also plagued with similar delays.

       Mr Murray believes that the delays could stem from a combination of complex engineering challenges, pointing to the inherent difficulty of implementing first-of-a-kind projects in each country.

       Assuming that all of its new reactors would be built using the latest EPR technology, Mr Bruegel said the goal is too ambitious, given the current tech and financial obstacles.

       Instead, having six to eight of such reactors by 2050 would be a more realistic goal, while small modular reactors (SMRs) could help to partially fill the capacity void.

       SMRs generally occupy less space and generate around a third of the power capacity of conventional nuclear plants. These can be scaled up like Lego blocks, and are considered safer than conventional reactors because they each produce a smaller amount of power and contain less radioactive materials.

       However, many of these reactors are still in the research phase and have not yet been commercialised.

       EDF – which has an ongoing SMR project under its subsidiary Nuward – was supposed to have the plant commercialised in 2025, and start construction by around 2030.

       But a Reuters report in July found that EDF is looking to redraft the SMR design amid cost and technology concerns.

       This was the case for the NuScale reactor in the US – the first SMR to receive regulatory approval there. (It) had to cancel construction plans amid mounting costs.

       The company cited inflationary pressures on its supply chain and high construction costs. In theory, SMRs are more economical to build as their parts are typically constructed in factories and assembled on site.

       Apart from nuclear fission, which is used in conventional reactors, as well as EPR and SMR, Mr Macron has also committed to redouble research efforts into nuclear fusion and superconducting magnets.

       Unlike fission, where radioactive uranium atoms are split into two, fusion involves combining two forms of hydrogen at extreme temperatures of 150 million deg C – 10 times hotter than the centre of the sun. The fusion reaction occurs in a state of matter known as plasma, a hot charged gas with a viscous texture.

       While fusion has immense potential as an energy source, the technology is still not yet ready for commercialisation.

       Nonetheless, researchers are hoping for more funding to be poured into efforts to further scientific research in nuclear fusion.

       Dr Jerome Bucalossi, head of the CEA’s Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research, said that fission has conventionally been getting more funding because the energy source is much more developed and is already at the industrial scale.

       More would be needed to drive the fusion industry to greater heights, and at a faster rate to make commercialisation a reality, he added.

       The CEA facility in Cadarache, Southern France, is home to the experimental fusion reactor, West. The reactor conducts many experiments on a smaller scale, with a view of laying the groundwork for Iter, the world’s largest experimental fusion reactor, which is just in its backyard.

       In May, CEA researchers, in collaboration with scientists from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in the US, created a plasma that hit 50 million deg C for a straight six minutes, setting a world record. While other fusion reactors have created plasma at hotter temperatures, the plasma has not been able to last as long.

       The holy grail for scientists would be to create a self-sustaining plasma that is able to generate energy for prolonged periods of time, which is the prerequisite for commercial fusion plants.