[MUSIC] Is it possible, in the light of this experience, to build the nuclear power plant that is absolutely safe that will shut down safely even if there is a an emergency? >> I will be a bit shy in using the terms absolute. But plants much safer than the Fukushima plants are already in construction, and some ready to go. They are called the third generation plants and they take into account all the lessons learned from the previous accident in Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. And if such sudden had been in Fukushima- >> It would not the accident. >> It wouldn't have molten to core and we wouldn't have this massive release of radioactivity. The lessons from Fukushima was okay, maybe these new plants are very, very safe. But there are still 430 old plants in operation today. And so we should increase their safety, we should make them more resistant to external regulations floods. And we should have better protection of the emergency water and power supply. >> Is it more covenient to improve the safety of old plans that are in operation or to let them go and build entirely new plants? >> Most of the plants already in operation can be extremely improved by making a more resistent supply of both power and water. And if this is being done, which is recommended by the stress test, which we carried out within the European Union. Then the plants will have such increased degree of safety that it is better to let them proceed- >> Continue. >> Continue their normal life. But indeed, it will never be as safe as those plans of the new generation. >> And how much it costs to improvethe safety or, I mean, some people say that nuclear power is no longer competitive? >> Nuclear power is still competitive today, if you should speak of the operating plants. And if you take into account those lessons of Fukushima and the money to be spent if we want to increase their useful life from the 40 to 60 years. They will still be competitive with almost all the other source of electricity. Barring the big or electric dams. >> Okay, those are? >> Those are the best, okay. But you cannot build them anywhere. >> No, you need to. >> You need the geography. >> Yes, yes. >> But against the other competitors, those existing plans, even revamped, are competitive. Whether the new generation will keep its competitiveness. We will still have to wait a few years because only the first prototypes- >> [INAUDIBLE]. >> Are ready to go. And prototypes are always much more expensive than series. >> Yes, and another issue that is causing always a lot of concern is the disposal of waste. What progress has been made for the disposal of waste? Is it possible to dispose of waste in a safe manner or is it going to be a perennial problem? >> As you know, there are many categories of nuclear waste, so let's address those which are really dangerous, so-called high activity, high-level waste. Presently in the world there are four or five underground laboratories where the are studying the characteristic of deep geological strata which have been stable for millions of years. And because the general consensus within the scientific people- >> Community. >> Is this deep geological storage is the way to go. And indeed, if you have, for instance, like in France the clay deposit which is 500 meters deep underground. And if you install your waste packages in this stratum, the time for the radioactive material within the waste package to go back to the surface somehow is so long that radioactivity will have somehow decayed to a point where it will be innocuous. So, certainly there is a scientific consensus that it is a way to go. But the scientific consensus did not carry automatically public acceptance. >> Yes. >> And we are back to the question, country by country. For instance, in the United states there is today, has been in fact since 1998, a deep gorge we call- >> Site. >> Repository in operation which accept long lived radio active package. But only those waste which come from the defesnse activities of United States. >> From the military. >> But it is the same, it would be simpler. An administrative act to say now we can accept civil unrest can be done the day somehow. And countries like Finland, Sweden and France, are very close to actually digging their first civilian deep underground repository. >> So, this would mean digging deep underground currents where are you store the- >> You dig galleries and in these galleries you make holes where you put your waste package with the adequate somehow to make sure that you accumulate the barriers. Because in the question of waste, disposal, integration of reactors, integration of short cycle plans, it's always the same thing, containment. Radioactivity is easy to detect. It is easy to protect oneself from radioactive source that you have identified. So you make sure that it doesn't move from where- >> From where- >> From where you put it. So barriers, multiple barriers, and time of transfer. >> Okay, so we think that after all we see, that after all there is going to be necessarily a future for nuclear energy. We see that it may not be as cheap as we had expected, but still it remains a very competitive source of energy. And at the same time and especially, I would say, it is extremely important in our fight against global warming. So, maybe as Professor Barre was saying, we have lost the battle to prevent global warming to go beyond two degrees. It will be inevitable that it goes beyond two degrees, but we need to move fast in order to prevent it from going much beyond two degrees. And in this fight, the deployment of nuclear energy is necessary and very important tool. Because, after all, nuclear energy adds large increments of power capacity at each. One nuclear power plant is a machine that is capable of producing a lot of energy. And if we have to produce the same with, for example, renewable sources, I think that's an interesting parallel. How many wind turbines do we need to be the equivalent of a nuclear power plant? I think a wind turbine can now be around- >> 6 gigawatt. >> Yeah, 6, 10, let's say 10. >> Let's say 10. >> 10. >> And nuclear power plant would be like 1500. But nuclear power plant will operate 80% of the year and the wind turbine would operate 25, maybe 30% of the year. So, in fact, they are not completely comparable. >> No, okay. But even if we are extremely lucky that we always have wind blowing in one place. And if not in that place in another place or in a third place, we would need something like- >> 450. >> 900 or 13,000, 1,350 nuclear turbines, wind turbines, to do the same job as one nuclear power plant. So, clearly, that is where the challenge lies. And that is the contribution that we can expect from nuclear energy. Thank you very much. Thank you- >> Thank you. >> Bertrand.
