Nuclear Fallout for Macron - And Us

Longtime readers will be familiar with my decade-long refrain that the French badly need
other countries to dig them out of their nuclear morass.  Their fleet of nukes (across France and, let it be remembered, the UK) is the biggest in the free world: they are ageing badly:  they have not been making anything like adequate provision for decommissioning:  their chosen strategy of extending the lives of the monsters is equally unaffordable:  intelligent frogs (and readers of this blog) have seen this coming for a long time.  

Their solution will centre on blackmailing their neighbours into contributing to a nuclear version of the CAP.  Brexit muddies the waters a bit for them; but they have other plans for the UK's role in all this - the exorbitant but government-underwritten Hinkley Point electricity price, plus the local blackmail of what's to happen to EDF's 8 existing reactors in this country. And, lest we forget, we are frequently downwind of France ...

Enter the shiny new socialist technocrat Macron, who knows all this as well as anyone.  His official plan is to cut French nuclear capacity from 75% of their total generation to 50% by 2025; and his newly-appointed energy minister, one Nicolas Hulot, is a prominent anti-nuclear Green.  They can't afford that plan, either - and sensible people know that, too.  Rumours of a push-back by EDF are already flying.

Fun and games ahead.  A shame we don't have the leadership to make the best of our hand.  I first concluded May was going to prove useless when she rolled over on Hinkley in the face of threats from Hollande, and nothing we've seen since really changes that.

ND

from Capitalists@Work http://www.cityunslicker.co.uk/2017/05/nuclear-fallout-for-macron.html