PARIS — As French President Emmanuel Macron makes the rounds in Washington starting Wednesday for the first state visit of the Biden administration, high on his agenda are his plans for a nuclear energy “renaissance.” His entourage includes the major players from France’s nuclear energy industry, who will be looking to the French leader to help boost the development and export of their technology, including smaller and more versatile reactors.
While the United States and France are aligned in their response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they are often competitors when it comes to civilian nuclear energy. But amid the lingering effects of the pandemic and Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, “domestic economic slowdowns and international sanctions will be a stress test for the export potential of Russia and China,” Sung-Mi Kim, an international security researcher, wrote in aBolder efforts by the United States — still the only country in the world that has more operational power plants than France — could speed up research and development on rival technology, and potentially yield room for...
But as the existing power plants kept producing sufficient amounts of cheap electricity, interest in constructing additional reactors faded. Technological know-how disappeared as workers retired or moved abroad, and the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan raised questions over whether any new nuclear plants would ever be built in France.
A French official added Monday that one area where France anticipates possible mutual interests is the development of small modular reactors .SMRs produce less energy than traditional nuclear plants, but could be produced quicker and at greater scale.