TRUE OR FALSE. Can the Fessenheim nuclear power plant really be restarted, as the MPs voted?

Is a revival possible for the Alsatian Fessenheim nuclear power plant, closed in June 2020 after 43 years of operation ? MPs voted in favor of its reopening on Wednesday, June 18, as part of the National Assembly's review of the proposed law on France's energy programming . The amendment to revive the site was presented by the National Rally. "The reopening of the Fessenheim nuclear power plant – Marine Le Pen's campaign promise in 2022 – has been passed," the RN group in the National Assembly rejoiced on the social network X. "I promised it, the RN group got it passed," the former presidential candidate said .

But can France's oldest nuclear power plant really restart? The site is gradually emptying, ICI Alsace reported in September 2024, showing a deserted engine room and dismantled turbines and generators. "This building is empty. Once the floor is concreted, it will serve as a warehouse to store the nuclear packages," Laurent Jarry, director of the Fessenheim nuclear power plant, explained to local radio.

Nothing insurmountable, according to members of the RN interviewed on Thursday. "It's very difficult to know today what state it is in exactly, what has been dismantled or not," assured MP Jean-Philippe Tanguy on Sud Radio , denouncing a "state lie" and "a lack of transparency."

"We are told about the engine room and some machines, which are not the primary circuit – the most critical – which have been dismantled but which can be replaced."

Jean-Philippe Tanguy, RN MP for the Somme

on Sud Radio

"The progress of the dismantling is very slow" and "the government does not know how long it will take," Christian Zimmermann, regional councillor and president of RN Alsace, also told the regional daily Dernières nouvelles d'Alsace .

Knowing the precise progress of the work is a crucial point of the debate, because the construction site is punctuated by stages that definitively seal the fate of the power plant. Marine Le Pen knows this and she even mentioned it in November 2021 on franceinfo . "I solemnly ask the President of the Republic for a moratorium on the dismantling of Fessenheim because in March 2022 the dismantling will reach a point of no return, that is to say, a point where we will never be able to reopen Fessenheim again."

The Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection Authority (ASNR) set the record straight Thursday at a press conference. "Several irreversible operations have been carried out, for which there is currently no technical solution to reverse them. This is particularly the case for the decontamination of circuits," the authority explained, as reported by France 3 Grand Est .

The authority also put forward other technical elements explaining the impossibility of restarting the plant. The ASNR notably mentioned the dismantling of components in the core of the vessel and the decontamination of the primary circuits, "an aggressive operation which no longer allows the circuit to be considered to meet its initial technical specifications" , quotes L'Alsace .

Beyond the technical aspect, the ASNR pointed to the regulatory dimension. "There is no procedure for restarting a permanently shut-down facility," it declared. A hypothetical restart of the plant would result in a project that "would be considered a new facility in its own right." It added: "A possible authorization for a new reactor taking over the facilities would therefore come up against the fact that the project would not meet current safety requirements."

"The Fessenheim site cannot be restarted as it is, that would be heresy and it is the Fessenheim MP who is telling you that," declared Raphaël Schellenberger, a Republican MP for Haut-Rhin and president of the local information and monitoring committee for the Fessenheim power plant, during the debates in the Assembly. The elected representative, who had spoken out against the closure of the power plant, now considers the attempt to restart "two reactors that are already being dismantled" to be "absurd ."

The activities underway since 2020 at the Fessenheim power plant site are aimed at preparing for its actual dismantling. And more than 85% of the actions to be carried out during this preliminary phase have already been completed, according to a progress report published in February by EDF . According to the electricity company , "dismantling will begin by 2026 as soon as the dismantling decree issued by the Minister for Ecological Transition is obtained after a public inquiry and the opinion of the Nuclear Safety Authority." The completion of the work is currently scheduled for 2040.

"The procedure for restarting the Fessenheim plant would be even longer and more expensive than building the EPR2 ," Nicolas Goldberg, energy expert at Colombus Consulting and Terra Nova, told franceinfo. of at least one EPR2 nuclear reactor is planned by the Elysée "by 2038" , with an overall bill, for the six new generation reactors, for the moment estimated by the government at 100 billion euros, according to L'Usine nouvelle .