After the Astrid failure, the Marcoule site sees its future in small… “SMR” nuclear reactors

Du foncier reste disponible autour du site de Marcoule. Archive Mikaël Anisset

Le site gardois, pionnier du nucléaire civil, a vu passer de nombreux projets qui lui auraient permis de connaître une seconde vie. Il espère se relancer avec les petits réacteurs modulaires, même si le chemin est encore semé d’embûches. Explications.

Last February, the decision seemed to be a done deal. It was said, in Gard Rhodanien, that at the end of a nuclear policy council, the President of the Republic would announce that the Marcoule site had been chosen to host the prototype of the French SMR, this small nuclear reactor often presented as the future of the sector. Some local elected officials had even prepared a press release to react promptly to this decision which would ensure the recovery of Marcoule, once considered the cradle of French nuclear power. At stake: a potential of 2,000 to 4,000 jobs over several decades and all the spin-offs that go with it.

EDF project postponed “sine die”

Bloody hell. If “the development of innovative small reactors” was discussed that day, no official announcement came out of this atomic conclave. Worse, a few months later, in July, EDF announced that it was reviewing the design of Nuward, its SMR project that was supposed to revolutionize the European energy market. “Talking about a change of design is a very polite way of saying that we are not very keen on doing the project within the allotted time. Or that we are not technologically and financially capable of meeting the deadline” , translates an expert, whose position requires maintaining anonymity. An elected official, also off the record, believes that it is the President of the Republic who, scalded by “the 10-year delay and €30 billion overrun” on the EPR, asked EDF to focus on its priority files. In short, Nuward has not been buried but the postponement “indefinitely” does not indicate anything good. “When we go back upstream in the design, the need to define a site is questioned differently. The safety studies will take a few years”, we are confirmed at the Ministry of Energy. QED.

And that is how Marcoule once again missed an ambitious project. “Since the pants we took for Astrid (the prototype of the 4th generation reactor promised to Marcoule and finally abandoned in 2019), I have learned to be very suspicious”,confides Alexandre Pissas, vice-president of the Gard Department, who today admits to having played the role of go-between between EDF and its president Françoise Laurent-Perrigot, a sign that the Gard site was well positioned. “That said, there are always the projects of start-ups that are also working to develop their SMRs”, he says.

“A real opportunity”

The mayor of Bagnols-sur-Cèze, Jean-Yves Chapelet, a former engineer at the CEA, goes even further: “In my eyes, the EDF halt is a real opportunity for us. It leaves the field open to the private sector and many of these companies are interested in Marcoule where we have know-how, available land and the acceptability of the territory, which is not neutral”, confides the elected official of the town of 18,000 inhabitants who has grew up in the 60s with the neighboring nuclear site of Marcoule.

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The president of the Agglomeration of Gard Rhodanien, Jean-Christian Rey, confirms:“We are working on a seduction file to demonstrate to these start-ups that we have many assets here”, he says. Starting with the land that had been reserved for Astrid. “They are in direct connection with the Marcoule site and in this case, an extension file is easier to carry out than a creation file”, he adds.

Read also: The cradle of French nuclear power, the Marcoule site hopes to keep the Gaullist heritage alive

According to our information, which no one wants to confirm for the moment, due to industrial secrecy, we would even be more than just making contact. Newcleo, one of the eleven start-ups that had passed the first France 2030 call for projects launched by Emmanuel Macron to imagine the nuclear power of tomorrow, would already be on the verge of formalizing the acquisition of a prime location in Gard Rhodanien, a year after setting up a design office in Avignon, with the aim of designing the future fuel manufacturing plant for its reactors. “This would be the ideal project for Marcoule, because Newcleo plans to install, by 2030, this plant next to its demonstrator, a new-generation mini-reactor (Astrid type) which must produce electricity, i.e. local know-how, when its best-placed competitors, Jimmy and Calogena, are working on reactors which must provide decarbonized heat for industry or urban networks”, observes an expert on the matter. And then, with 850 employees, €50 million in turnover and €535 million raised, Newcleo is more than an ambitious start-up.

Real ambitions… to be welcomed with caution

However, we must be wary of these data, we are advised at the top. “Suggesting that we are already looking for land may just be sending a positive signal to investors in the race to raise funds”, we are told. Above all, a confidential audit of the High Commissioner for Atomic Energy, revealed last month by Le Point, has somewhat dampened the general enthusiasm. The technological challenge being complex, out of the eleven companies evaluated, only two to four maximum could see their technology lead to the production of an operational reactor in the foreseeable future: Jimmy, Naria, Calogena and… Newcleo. “It is not shocking, when you do research, to see in a very Darwinian way, start-ups fall over time. The work on the SMR does not stop, on the contrary, but this report must invite caution locally”, continues the expert.

A nuclear policy council was scheduled for Tuesday, December 10 with announcements expected from the President of the Republic, but the national political context will postpone the meeting by at least a month… and therefore the progress hoped for by the SMR project leaders to attract investors. The Marcoule territory, too, will therefore have to wait a little longer. Maybe even a lot.

“Small modular reactor”, the future of the sector ?

SMR. Small modular reactor or “petit réacteur coulissant" in French, an acronym that could hide the future of the nuclear sector. These are small, low-power reactors, between 20 and 300 MWe per unit, when current reactors for electricity production have a power between 900 MWe and 1650 MWe. Smaller, less powerful, they would above all be less expensive to manufacture. The various parts could be mass-produced in the factory and then assembled on site, a modularity that would complete the high-power nuclear offer.They could have new uses beyond the supply of electricity, such as the production of heat”, we can read on the Orano website. The prospect also interests an industry seeking decarbonization: steel industry, petrochemicals or metallurgy, or even seawater desalination. Even Google has ordered some to power its data centers.

These new generations of reactors are meeting with great global enthusiasm. There are more than 80 projects, with more or less advanced technology, in the United States, China, Russia and Europe. In France, President Macron announced in 2022 investments of up to €1 billion allocated to the development of these reactors, part for the EDF project, the other for the start-ups that have committed to this quest. The first SMRs are expected for 2030, or even 2035 in France.

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