The French government (through the Ministère de la Transition écologique et solidaire) has backed down its commitments to sharply reduce nuclear power production and has abandoned the target of reducing the share of nuclear in the power mix to 50% by 2025 from the current 75%, estimating that this objective was no longer realistic.
According to new scenarios by French electricity transmission system operator RTE released just before this announcement, reducing the share of nuclear to 50% of the power mix in 2025 would mean shutting down 22 GW of nuclear capacity. France would then have to postpone the closure of coal-fired power plants and would have to build 11 GW of new gas-fired capacity, boosting CO2 emissions. Under one of the four scenarios, France may cut nuclear capacity by 14.5 GW and reach 50% of nuclear in the power mix by 2030, i.e. five years later than planned.
The government has reaffirmed it remains committed to reducing nuclear energy but no new deadline has been set so far.