France does not have any new reactors currently under construction because until March 2023, expansion of nuclear generating capacity was forbidden by law.
So even to build the one Flamanville 3 reactor, they had to shut down two older reactors in Fessenheim in order to not have an illegal increase in capacity.
Now that the law has been rescinded, they are planning 6 simplified EPR2 reactors, taking lessons from the fairly catastrophic EPR project FV3.
(Of course, even that catastrophic reactor will be more profitable than any intermittent renewable projects in, for example, Germany, but hey, the standards for what counts as "success" and what as "failure" are different for nuclear and for renewables).
France also currently does not need to urgently expand their nuclear fleet, so the schedule for the EPR2s matches those needs and the need to fully account for the problems with FV3. Instead, they are increasing the production of their existing fleet, both by operational upgrades and also by increasing use of intermittent renewables to cover variations in demand, allowing the nuclear fleet to run closer to fully rated capacity instead of having to load-follow.
So even to build the one Flamanville 3 reactor, they had to shut down two older reactors in Fessenheim in order to not have an illegal increase in capacity.
Now that the law has been rescinded, they are planning 6 simplified EPR2 reactors, taking lessons from the fairly catastrophic EPR project FV3.
(Of course, even that catastrophic reactor will be more profitable than any intermittent renewable projects in, for example, Germany, but hey, the standards for what counts as "success" and what as "failure" are different for nuclear and for renewables).
France also currently does not need to urgently expand their nuclear fleet, so the schedule for the EPR2s matches those needs and the need to fully account for the problems with FV3. Instead, they are increasing the production of their existing fleet, both by operational upgrades and also by increasing use of intermittent renewables to cover variations in demand, allowing the nuclear fleet to run closer to fully rated capacity instead of having to load-follow.