“You have to pick your battle,” said French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday, in effect ruling out the push to phase out nuclear power in the country that is among the most reliant modern country in the world to rely on nuclear reactors to generate electricity.
The battle he chooses to fight, he said, is global warming.
Seventy-five percent of the electricity in France is generated through nuclear power. In a post-Fukushima Daiichi push to reduce nuclear power's share of its generational mix, France has set a target to reduce that to 50 percent by 2025, but leaders have shown repeatedly they are not in a hurry to make close operational power plants before they are due.
In a news conference on Sunday, Macron said, “I don't idolize nuclear power at all. But I think you have to pick your battle. My priority in France, Europe and internationally is C02 emissions and (global) warming.”
Nuclear power is “the most carbon-free way to produce electricity with renewables,” Reuters quoted him as saying.
“What did the Germans do when they shut all their nuclear in one go? They developed a lot of renewables but they also massively reopened thermal and coal. They worsened their CO2 footprint, it wasn’t good for the planet. So I won’t do that,” he said.
Macron said he would let the country's nuclear power regulator – the French Nuclear Safety Authority – decide when individual plants should be closed. France, currently, has 58 operating nuclear reactors.