Abstract
Nuclear energy policy should have been a major area of cooperation for France and Germany, playing a lead role in the energy policy of the EU. Yet they have retained different options, especially regarding nuclear energy while the EU energy policy remained very indicative. These two ?coordinated economies? should have been able to cooperate more closely on this issue. While the reasons for this difference in behavior have much to do with the specificities of the nuclear energy, they are more precisely related to the continuously rising level of security requirements, a learning process in which the magnitude of risks and time lengths appeared, even before Fukushima, to go beyond rational boundaries on which cooperation (as well as market) ventures could be based. This raises the issue in the present state of the technologies of the possibility of an international governance of this nuclear industry.
Highlights
The two countries had followed different options after the oil crisis of the 1970s, with France investing in nuclear power stations to realize up to 75% of its production of electricity compared with up to 25% in Germany
Let us recall under which conditions the two countries have been willing to reduce the use of nuclear energy
Over the past decades a general concern regarding nuclear safety started to develop, partly boosted by the observation of the scale and the time lags of the Chernobyl effects, and by the discovery of the hazards linked to the decommissioning of nuclear power stations reaching their end of life, assessments which could not be left to Electricité de France (EDF), the private company, even if the state remained the prevailing shareholder with some 85% of the shares
Summary
We start comparing the structure of electricity production at the beginning of the economic downturn that followed the global financial crisis of 2008. The electricity produced with renewable sources is roughly comparable between the two countries (with similar levels per capita) even if it is mainly hydroelectric energy for France and wind and solar energy for Germany. To complete this picture one needs to have an idea of the imports and exports of electricity as well as a comparison of the structures of uses in each country. It outlines the importance of oil and gas in final consumption (63.5 % for Germany, 61.1% for France). Both felt the need to turn away from nuclear energy at about the same time
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