The efforts of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to make France the supreme nuclear power of Europe are old. Most recently, he said he wants to increase his country's nuclear weapons arsenal and expand it to protect European allies through France's deterrence capability. That is to temporarily allow EU member states to host nuclear assets. The countries possibly participating in the new French nuclear strategy would be Great Britain, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Greece, Sweden and Denmark. Their involvement is not certain. «The next 50 years will be an era of nuclear weapons,» Macron explained. After the exit of Great Britain from the EU, i.e. after Brexit, France remained the only nuclear military power of the EU. No one can dispute this title. But Macron wants more than that. «Nuclear anchoring countries are often nuclear weapons states, such as Britain, the US and France,» the president said in 2020. «Without civilian nuclear power there is no military nuclear power, and without military nuclear power there is no civilian nuclear power.» It was at the time when Macron was starting to dream of a France leading the civil nuclear energy industry in Europe. And he is the leader of the atomic renaissance of France and Europe. But the country was years behind America and Russia in terms of technology and projects. It still is. France is the country of nuclear energy, having no less than 56 operational reactors. And she produces them herself. In 2022, Macron said he wanted 14 more reactors by mid-century. Nuclear power has gained special importance in European energy strategies after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 caused an energy crisis and an unprecedented wave of inflation in Europe. Eastern European states felt the biggest shocks. Currently, they all have plans to build new reactors. Poland wants to build its first nuclear power plant. The wave was led by France. But it seems that it will not participate significantly in the development of the Eastern European nuclear industry. Hungary cooperates with Russia. The other countries prefer the USA. And all of them are moving towards small modular reactors (SMR), a technology that France does not yet possess. But maybe France will be better at nuclear armament, which also involves building nuclear submarines.
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