Nuclear Acceleration Law: Reaction to the Constitutional Council’s Decision

For Greenpeace France, apart from the marginal oversight of some provisions of the Nuclear Acceleration Act (increased penalties for activists, articles on IRSN, programmatic provisions on hydrogen or terminology, refusal to replace the term “diversification” with “decarbonisation”), the CC gives A blank check for the government to restart construction of new nuclear reactors.

By enacting the abolition of nuclear reduction and capacity cap targets, the Constitutional Council ratified the programmatic provisions of a law that is supposed to be only procedural law. The Constitutional Council contradicts itself in its response to the argument of the inefficiency of nuclear energy to act quickly in the face of the climate emergency for the benefit of future generations. The new reactors announced by the government won’t see the light before 2035 at best, which is a deadline too late to respond to the climate emergency. The Constitutional Council takes a political position – not a legal one: it has written that it does not have to interfere with the government’s choices on how best to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while sending the country a political signal favorable to the development of nuclear energy. power.