Navigating French post-nuclear trajectories: lessons from Fessenheim's redevelopment pathways

Abstract

As with any industry, nuclear installations have a limited lifespan. This is generally around forty years, although there is debate about the possibility of extending the operation of the reactors. In any case, such facilities are bound to shut down eventually. They will have to be dismantled, and their territory redeveloped. However, little attention has been paid to the issues of dismantling and the future use of these sites. The aim of this article is to develop an analytical framework to answer the following questions: What factors influence the redevelopment trajectories of post-nuclear sites? And how do they interact? We consider three redevelopment possibilities: brownfield, greenfield and multi-scale redevelopment. This latter category includes the redevelopment of a post-nuclear territory on a site larger than the original power plant site. Our analytical framework is based on the concept of trajectory. We consider that the choice of redevelopment, which we call spatial configuration, depends on a number of factors, perceived as strategic resources by different actors, and related to each other over a period of time. To illustrate this, we apply our analytical framework to the redevelopment of the Fessenheim nuclear power plant in France. Its application has enabled us to make our framework more flexible to adapt it to local specificities. However, the analysis of the redevelopment trajectories of nuclear power plants with fundamentally different characteristics is essential to better understand the interrelationships that lead to the choice of a particular type of redevelopment.