The French Academy of Sciences said Thursday that the country's policy of reducing its dependence on nuclear power was a step in the wrong direction considering the country's goal of reducing harmful carbon emissions that contribute to global warming.
France has set its sights on a 40 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 with a goal of a 75 percent reduction by 2050 compared with 1990 levels. Partly as a reaction to the March 2011, three-reactor meltdown accident at the Fukushima Daiichi generating station in Japan, however, France has also set a goal of reducing nuclear power in its energy generation from a current 75 percent share of its energy mix to 50 percent by 2025.
Other goals also play into the equation. France is also aiming to reduce total energy consumption by half by 2050 (compared with 2012) and to increase the share of renewable power sources to 32 percent, the World Nuclear Association reported.
In response, the Academy of Sciences issued a statement on April 19 that noted the energy policy needed to “take better account of physical, technological and economic restraints,” stating that “nuclear energy is objectively the most effective way to reduce the share of fossil fuels in the production of electrical energy.”
The Academy said that policy needed to take into account the intermittent quality of solar, wind and hydro power, the renewable power sources, and that “our fellow citizens might be led to believe it would be possible to develop renewable power as a way to decarbonize the system while removing both fossil fuel and nuclear.”
With an expansive energy market available in Europe, the problem of intermittent power sources “one might think” could be solved “at the European-level,” the Academy said. However, “long nights are everywhere at the same time in Europe, and anticyclones are often with us and our neighbors simultaneously,” the Academy said.