In the context of the World Civil Nuclear Exhibition (WNE) to be held in Paris from 4 to 6 November 2025, by publishing a post appropriately titled “At the nuclear exhibition in Paris, the industry celebrates the relaunch of the atom”, AFP accredits the alleged thesis “return to support nuclear power”, caused by the exponential development of artificial intelligence (AI) and its crazy energy consumption.
However, in reality, the global nuclear industry is unable to meet this enormous and urgent demand because building large nuclear reactors takes years… even decades: the Flamanville EPR reactor was announced in early 2004 by the then CEO of EDF and, almost twenty-two years later, the reactor is still not functional!
Another advanced option is the well-known SMR, a small modular reactor, which was of course announced “safe, easy and fast to build, and cheap”. So I just had to think about it. However, the 127 SMR projects identified worldwide by the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency, rather than making this approach concrete, instead demonstrate its total spread.
In 2021, we announced that if they succeed, small modular nuclear reactors will produce highly destructive electricity. The most important point is actually the beginning of the sentence: “If they see the light of day.”
It’s true, the SMR bubble has burst. In France, the main thing
