The 1973 French Energy Revolution

Most of us across the world would have never ever known about of this topic, or even heard about this topic ever, which is why we are going to discover it today. This topic is one notable one, because it understands the importance of not being dependent on other nations for our own requirements, which may be used as a choke point by the other nation.

For those who may not have understood the topic of this article, in brief - it is about the change of France's energy requirements/sources from Imported Oil to Nuclear Energy. 

The primary cause of the need to change its energy source is logically thought to "become more sustainable" however in the year of 1973, the country was still rapidly growing and thoughts of protecting the planet and become less polluting did not yet become widespread. 

The real cause was the OPEC Nations (Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries) deciding that they will not supply oil to those nations who support Israel in the Yom Kippur War against Egypt & the Middle Eastern Nations involved in the war. 

France, along with the United States and some more nations were on the side of Israel, which is why the embargo was imposed for them. The nation of France along with many others were on their own now to meet their energy needs, atleast for a short period of time in history.

France, along with many other western nations had been growing rapidly since World War 2, and coal was left behind in favor for liquid fuels, aka Oil, which though extremely unsustainable was chosen as it was cheap and abundant.

While coal had played a critical role in the Industrial Revolution, the subsequent economic expansion necessitated diversification, though this led directly to extreme reliance on imported petroleum

In the time period of the Yom-Kippur War, the primary source of energy for the entire nation of France was imported oil, that made up around 65-70% of their needs to be fulflled. 

The Messmer Plan, named after the then Prime Minister Pierre Messmer was launched in March 1974 where the plan included "le tout-nucléaire" that meant going all nuclear. This plan intended to go independent from foreign fuel sources first of all, and it was also a sustainable source of energy, both environment wise and availability wise. 

The Messmer plan established aggressive, unprecedented targets. The most unique part of this plan was to raise nuclear energy’s contribution to electricity generation from a mere 8% in 1973 to over 70% by 1985.

To achieve this goal, the initial phase plan to construct 13 nuclear power plants, each with an approximate capacity of 1,000 MW, totaling 13,000 MW of additional capacity. 

Over the course of the subsequent buildout, this strategic decision ultimately led to the construction of 58 nuclear reactors, a real and massive response that showed that France was very serious in getting its energy grid independent from foreign sources.

As Japan had proved to the world that speed can indeed be achieved on rails too in 1964 with the introduction of the Shinkansen, France had stepped up to compete with the Japanese to show their capabilities are of similar match. 

When the TGV program had been under planning as early as 1966, but this was a time when the train was experimented with the assisstance of Gas Turbines which powered the trains. This however came to a grinding halt with the income of the Yom-Kippur War which meant that the program now shifted towards building the trains electric instead. 

Over the years progress was made with the first commercial service taking place in 1981 from Paris to Lyon, a major city in France and set a new benchmark that the west, atleast France for sure was very capable of revolutionizing the rails instead of fully shifting to aviation and cars unlike nations such as the United States and Canada.

The world was left in awe when the TGV Program had hit a serious mark in its history when the Project V150 (a train prepared for the run) hit an astonishing speed of 574.8 km/h (357.2 mph) during a test run on 3 April 2007. A video below shows the exact moment the train had crossed the speed.

The decision to electrify the TGV was not just about cost reduction in transportation (high oil prices),  but about economic optimization of the nuclear fleet (large network of power plants) itself. Nuclear plants, being high-capital, baseload power sources, require maximizing their capacity factor to be financially viable. 

The Messmer Plan committed France to flooding its grid with large volumes of stable power.By mandating that its major new national transportation project (TGV) would run entirely on this grid electricity, the state created a massive, captive, and predictable consumer of power. 

The TGV served as a crucial instrument of industrial policy, guaranteeing the sustained domestic demand necessary to stabilize and justify the enormous fixed capital investment in the nuclear infrastructure. This guaranteed demand stream was essential for turning the nuclear project into a stable, profitable national enterprise. 

The TGV infrastructure was structurally integrated with the French energy supply to stabilize the economics of the le tout-nucléaire project, demonstrating profound state control over cross-sector planning.