France has not done great job with their advanced nuclear unfortunately. To be fair there were many headwinds. So I assume they are just really pessimistic about its potential. They shouldn't be, because they have the nuclear industry and education to make it happen. Its just a matter of will and imagination

They killed their sodium reactor project:

https://www.reuters.com/article/france-nuclearpower-astrid-i...

One of the problem with GenIV is that every country wants to develop it and then use that reactor to consume the waste of the GenIII reactors. The problem is that this makes it doubly difficult and expensive. Essentially making GenIV pay for the 'sins' of GenIII. The problem with this is that given climate change, what should matter is building the most economical possible reactor, nuclear waste is not they primary problem they should try to fix.

Overall, I am not really a fan of Sodium reactors but the French had them working and not just a initial prototype, but a fully operational reactor that produced grid energy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix

Unfortunately the anti-nuclear people of course were extremely threatened by these and tried to prevented them any way the could. And managed to do so. People protested and threw molotov cocktails. A crazy swiss guy literally shot at the reactor with a rocket-propelled grenade (and this hurts me as a swiss person).

> A 1998 "Inquiry commission on Superphenix and fast neutrons reactor sector" [3] reported that "decision to close Superphénix was included in Jospin's program ... in the agreement between Socialist Party and Green Party". Also the same report says "despite many difficulties, the technical results are meaningful". In the explanation of vote at the end of the report, commission members says "give up on Superphenix has been a big error" and "Superphenix has to die because is a symbol".

France could easily have built 10-30 more of these designs in the 90s and 2000s. By now this would be far cheaper then building EPR and it would be safer. The whole project cost 9.1 billion euro and that was a first of its kind reactor with many issues, that seems to me a very acceptable price for such a ground breaking project.

What is beyond sad is that its the Green Party (and generally leftist parties) all over the world that is anti-nuclear. And the right usually happy to go with the cheaper fossil fuel option. So for a long time nuclear just didn't have a home.

Even worse France stopped all progress, had they continued on pace from 1980-2000 they would be in an amazing position right now, but nuclear output is essentially flat since then.

I prefer molten salt cooled designs over sodium cooled. Some interesting current examples are:

- Stable Molten Salt Reactor by Moltex Energy (basically a sodium reactor but replace sodium with a liquid coolant salt, and fill the assemblies with fuel salt)

- KP-FHR Kairos Power (a liquid fluoride salt cooled pebble reactor)

- IMSR by Terrestrial Energy (liquid salt cooled and fueled fast burner)

In my opinion advanced industrial countries like France, Germany or Europe in General could easily take any of these designs and build up to 100% nuclear by 2050. All of these are small enough that you can make large parts of them in a factory.