page_title: Nuclear power in France
section_title: Messmer Plan
hierarchical_section_title: Nuclear power in France / History / Messmer Plan
caption_attribution_description: English: Power generation CO₂ emissions in France as of 27 May 2020.
context_page_description: Nuclear power is the largest source of electricity in France, with a generation of 379.5 TWh, or 70.6% of the country's total electricity production of 537.7 TWh, the highest percentage in the world.
  Électricité de France – the country's main electricity generation and distribution company – manages the country's 58 power reactors. EDF is substantially owned by the French Government, with around 85% shares in government hands.
  France exported 38 TWh of electricity to its neighbours in 2017. The country becomes a net importer of electricity when demand exceeds supply, in rare cases of very inclement weather.
context_section_description: As a direct result of the 1973 oil crisis, on 6 March 1974 Prime Minister Pierre Messmer announced what became known as the 'Messmer Plan', a huge nuclear power program aimed at generating all of France's electricity from nuclear power. At the time of the oil crisis most of France's electricity came from foreign oil. Nuclear power allowed France to compensate for its lack of indigenous energy resources by applying its strengths in heavy engineering. The situation was summarized in a slogan: "In France, we do not have oil, but we have ideas."
  The announcement of the Messmer Plan, which was enacted without public or parliamentary debate, also led to the foundation of the Groupement des scientifiques pour l'information sur l'énergie nucléaire (Association of Scientists for Information on Nuclear Energy), formed after around 4,000 scientists signed a petition of concern over the government's action, known as the Appeal of the 400 after the 400 scientists who initially signed it. 
  The reason that the Messmer Plan was enacted without public or parliamentary debate, was because that there was no tradition to do that with high technological and strategic important decisions in the governments of France and the parliament did not have a scientific commission with sufficient technical means to handle such scientific and strategic decisions, just like the public does not have such means.
  France does not have any procedure of public inquiries to allow the assessment of major technological programmes. The plan envisaged the construction of around 80 nuclear plants by 1985 and a total of 170 plants by 2000. Work on the first three plants, at Tricastin, Gravelines, and Dampierre started the same year and France installed 56 reactors over the next 15 years.  
  
  As of 2020 nuclear power sector in France is the largest energy source of clean energy in EU with massive energy export to all neighbor countries of France, while France having some of the lowest emissions from electricity production in EU, on average 5x lower than Germany.
caption: Electricity generation related CO2 emissions in France as of 27 May 2020 with overall CO2 intensity of 52 gCO2eq/kWh. Source: electricitymap.org
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