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Liberté, égalité, Radioactivité
France built 37 nuclear reactors in ten years. To do this required making sure local communities shared in the benefits of atomic power.
The program’s eventual success was contingent on a politically courageous about-turn, regulatory focus, and a tax system that made local communities enthusiastic about hosting nuclear power stations. There were a handful of prominent nuclear skeptics, like future president François Mitterand, but France’s lack of domestic fossil fuel production ensured there was a broad pro-nuclear consensus across the major political parties. Chinese state-owned enterprises and research institutes reduced the number of impurities in the steel, replaced the analogue control systems with digital ones, and then set about localizing the supply chain and building a fleet.
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