France’s struggle to deliver a second nuclear era

For 10 years, Gaetan Geoffray worked as a plasterer and painter, before learning metalwork at a company that made cranes. Arnaud Dupuy was a policeman. A third colleague at their factory in the depths of rural Burgundy used to be a baker.

The factory is owned by Framatome, a subsidiary of state-controlled power utility EDF, and the trio are hoping to qualify for one of the most sought-after jobs in France, as nuclear-grade welders. If all goes well, they’ll one day be allowed to work on the most intricate features of the steel parts assembled in the plant, where the all-important 24-metre-long casings protecting the core of atomic reactors are made.

For now, that goal is at least three to four years off, so exacting are the demands in a field in which imperfect finishes can delay a project by months and cost millions, if not billions, of dollars.

“You have to be minutious with everything in nuclear,” says 34-year-old Dupuy, breaking away from practising on a small conical cylinder in a corner of the factory. The hulking reactor pressure vessels there, produced for a handful of British and French projects, undergo up to five years of checks, ultrasounds and perfecting work before they are ready.

For France, the next intake of hires and welding apprentices can’t come a day too soon. After years of political dithering over whether or not to cut its reliance on nuclear power, a hesitation echoed globally after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, the country has gone all-in with Europe’s most ambitious atomic construction project in decades.

President Emmanuel Macron, who was already doubling down on the low carbon technology even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dialled up concerns across the continent over energy security, is pushing to have the first in a series of six new reactors up and running by 2035.

The plans, which could be extended by at least another eight reactors, are the linchpin in France’s vision to reduce its net emissions to zero over the next three decades, in line with international agreements to limit the rise in average global temperatures.

In order to stand a chance of turning this vision into reality, the government estimates it needs to find another 100,000 nuclear specialists of all guises, from engineers and project supervisors to boilermakers and electricians, over the coming six years.

Looming large, beyond hurdles with design approvals and financing for the €52bn programme, is an even more basic question — whether France, Europe’s main atomic nation, still has the industrial capacity and people to make the projects happen on a scale it has not contemplated since the 1970s. 

“The biggest challenge is whether we know how to orchestrate a very large industrial project. No one really does these in Europe any more. It’s China, India,” says Antoine Armand, a lawmaker in Macron’s Renaissance party who steered a recent parliamentary probe into the state of France’s energy sector.

For others, doubts over when France will be able to deliver are a reason to pursue the rollout of renewable energy in a much greater way in the short term.

“We’re going into this with a sort of forceful optimism saying everything is going to be fine. However, today, there is nothing to guarantee that,” says lawmaker Barbara Pompili, a minister under Macron in his first term, but who has just left his party.

Hurdles to clear

Even for many of the most optimistic pro-nuclear advocates in France, the country’s new goals are something of a stretch, at least timewise. Reflecting this, state-owned energy company EDF has already outlined a softer 2035 to 2037 target for the first new reactor. In a sector with huge lead times and painstaking safety standards, the government is trying to shave off constraints that could hold the plans up, including cutting some of the permitting red tape in a new bill passed by parliament in March.

“Without that law, forget about everything else, 2035 was a non-starter for sure,” says one French government official.

By the end of 2027, the aim is to start construction of the first new reactor pair at Penly on France’s northern coast. The facility will be next to an existing plant and will utilise a simplified, if yet untested, iteration of the European Pressurised Reactor design.

That would leave eight years to lift-off, a timeframe that only China has come close to achieving; it finished the first in a pair of EDF-designed EPR in Taishan in 2018. By contrast, France’s Flamanville-3 reactor has taken more than twice as long — and still isn’t complete.

Joël Barre, a nuclear tsar appointed by the French government to co-ordinate the projects between ministries and EDF, says the target is a punchy one, but ultimately feasible given the Chinese experience.

“For sure, you also have to take into account the way different countries work. Working conditions in China are not the same as those in France,” Barre adds. “But still, it shows there is room for improvement.”

At their core, these projects require an alignment of skills, organisational prowess and manpower that few western nations have been able to deliver in recent decades.

France’s travails with Flamanville-3, beset with mishaps and 12 years behind schedule, are mirrored in the UK, the region’s other big atomic power backer. Two French-designed EPR reactors there are also behind schedule, while in the US, South Carolina abandoned two Westinghouse units under construction in 2017 following cost overruns and delays.

Some of the lessons from these setbacks will help with future orders, EDF executives have said. Yet the group is itself emerging from Europe’s energy crisis in a weakened state. It racked up a record €19bn operating loss last year as outages across its existing reactor fleet forced it to import power at eye-watering prices and wholesale markets still price electricity for delivery to France next winter at €416 per megawatt hour, more than twice the €169 for the German market.

Those shutdowns highlighted glaring skills shortages, forcing EDF to bring in 100 more welders from the US to help repair pipes affected by so-called stress corrosion. The output drop and other issues were so serious they spiralled into the parliamentary inquiry led by Armand into how France had lost its “energy sovereignty”. Former presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande were summoned as witnesses. Much of the other testimony at the hearings painted a worrisome picture of the task at hand. Last week it emerged that EDF had imposed a hiring hiatus as it figured out its recruitment priorities, although that has since been lifted.

‘Demands have changed’

As EDF and its suppliers race to get back into shape, their next challenge is around the corner. Nuclear safety regulator ASN says the effort will require something akin to a Marshall Plan, the US-funded reconstruction of Europe after the second world war.

France, which employs some 220,000 people in the nuclear industry, needs to rebuild a deep bench of qualified workers for its new nuclear drive. Among them will be highly trained welders like Geoffray and his colleagues — EDF estimates France will need double the 500 it has today by 2030. At the Hefaïs welding school launched last year by the company and other manufacturers near Cherbourg, on the northern coast close to France’s nuclear submarine shipyards, the complexities of even that task are apparent.

After nine months of training there, including with headsets on virtual equipment, they can qualify for a first job, says Corentin Lelièvre, the school’s director. But it can take five to seven years of experience and repeat training before they are entrusted with the most intricate tasks.

Those can require developing a quasi-acrobatic skill of being able to keep a steady hand while working upside down, or using a mirror in cramped corners of a reactor circuit to guide the weld — a one-shot operation that workers can’t go back on once it’s started. It also involves learning to work safely in a radioactive environment, and in a post-Fukushima world, how to grapple with extra layers of documentation.

“Demands have changed. Today we have to trace everything we do, if a pipe or screw has been touched,” says Sébastien Cuquemelle, the head of pipe maker Probent, one of an estimated 3,000 nuclear industry suppliers in France, and which is also looking to hire more staff.

Hefaïs hopes to be able to train 200 people a year when it is at full capacity, up from the 40 it took on in 2022.

The nuclear challenge is all the more frustrating because France once had exactly the body of expertise it now lacks. Following the oil shock of 1973, then-president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing ordered an unprecedented expansion of nuclear generation. France built 58 reactors over the following two decades, most of which are still operating.

The serial effect helped speed up construction once the industry hit its stride — something advocates of the new projects say France could emulate. A similar effect was felt in China, now home to the biggest domestic reactor building programme in the world, with 17 under construction as of July 2022.

Industrial ‘declinism’

The nuclear hiring challenge in France reflects a broader one, which Macron and his government have been trying to tackle since he came to power in 2017: that of making industrial jobs attractive again.

“If you look at the industrial jobs that have disappeared, it’s massive. Nuclear is the visible part of the iceberg. But it’s not the only issue we’re going to have,” Yves Bréchet, a physicist and former high commissioner for atomic energy in France, told the parliamentary hearing into EDF’s 2022 woes.

Jean-Léry Lecornier, the head of a 140-strong co-operative of industrial forgers on the outskirts of Paris that make valves for the sector, says he is aware “we’re not in a field that attracts young people”. He fears the nuclear ramp-up could be a challenge. “Our trouble is not getting contracts, it’s having the bodies we need to do them,” he adds, as workers in T-shirts and armed with giant pincers nimbly handle smouldering metal ingots under giant presses.

As in other developed countries, swaths of industrial jobs disappeared as the French economy pivoted more strongly towards services. The government has argued that it is already working to reverse that decline, attributing some progress to labour-market reforms that have made France more competitive and incentives to attract manufacturers back to the country. A small sliver of the country’s €100bn post-Covid economic stimulus package has been earmarked to help small businesses in the nuclear sector invest and train.

In 2017, France began to create industrial jobs again for the first time in more than 15 years, an inflection that has largely continued since, with 19,200 added on a net basis since 2019, national statistical compiler Insee found.

Asked about the challenges of the nuclear recruitment drive, energy minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher said it would build on the government’s efforts to change an out-of-date view of industrial jobs.

“It’s an extraordinary opportunity for our country,” Pannier-Runacher told reporters in early April. “We’re giving a sense of nobility back to some jobs that were not very well known, and which are often not badly paid.” Salaries for welders start at €23,000, above the minimum wage level of €20,500, and can rise to €32,000 a year, according to nuclear trade body Gifen.

Some in the industry, however, murmur that these government efforts are not enough, not just investment-wise but also because ministers could be even more forceful in their messaging.

“We’re ready, we’re making sure we can meet demand when it comes,” says one executive at a supplier. “But the one thing that really moves the needle in this industry is political will.”

Manufacturers are trying to plough ahead with recruitment all the same. In Burgundy, Framatome is investing €200mn modernising its premises and bringing some operations nearby in-house. Its sites include a huge forge in the heart of Le Creusot, a coal and steel town in the heart of French wine country, and an assembly plant in nearby Saint-Marcel.

Framatome is looking for another 580 people for its factories in the region this year, after making 500 hires in 2022, and is launching several “job dating” experiments or open days at its sites and in Paris to try to broaden its approach, according to human resources head Elisabeth Terrail.

Beyond its training programmes, like the conversion courses for welders, it needs experienced workers, with some drawn from other industries such as automotive.

Le Creusot has weathered deindustrialisation better than most; just under 40 per cent of the local workforce is still employed in industrial roles, nearly four times the national average. The town’s mayor, David Marti, says that is because in the lean years its factories were preserved rather than converted into properties, and local authorities ploughed money into creating labs or improving water networks used by manufacturers. Some employers kept staff on even when orders slowed, producing pieces and holding them as inventory.

Now Marti is among those calling on the government to do even more in its nuclear push, with investments on a major scale to help the hiring drive. “We need to go much faster. We’re doing it here to build up skills and it’s what we need to do on a national level,” Marti says.

“There is political will, but it’s not clear enough. I’m hearing a lot of love words for now — I’m waiting for action.”

Data visualisation by Chris Campbell