France’s oldest nuclear power plant will shut down on Tuesday after four decades in operation, to the delight of environmental activists who have long warned of contamination risks, but stoking worry for the local economy.
The Fessenheim plant, opened in 1977 and already three years over its projected 40-year life span, became a target for anti-nuclear campaigners after the catastrophic meltdown at Fukushima in Japan in 2011.
Despite a pledge by then-president Francois Hollande just months after the Fukushima disaster to close Fessenheim — on the Rhine river near France’s eastern border with Germany and Switzerland — it was not until 2018 that his successor Emmanuel Macron gave the final green light.
Run by state-owned energy company EDF, one of Fessenheim’s two reactors was disconnected in February.
The second is to be taken off line early Tuesday, but it will be several months before the reactors have cooled enough for the used fuel to be removed.
That process should be completed by 2023, and the plant is not expected to be fully dismantled before 2040 at the earliest.
“We hope, above all, to be the last victims of this witch hunt against nuclear” energy, Fessenheim union representative Anne Laszlo said ahead of the closure that will see about 150 families depart the tiny Alsatian community of 2,500 inhabitants this summer.
More will follow, with only 294 people needed on site for the fuel removal process until 2023, and about 60 after that for the final disassembly.
By the end of 2017, Fessenheim had over 1,000 employees and service providers on site.
There is no legal limit on the life span of French nuclear power stations, but the EDF had envisaged a 40-year ceiling for all second-generation reactors, which use pressurised water technology.
