Usually I would say that nuclear research and development dollars are wasted: they just displace purchasing solar/wind/storage. But with that big of an extant installed base, with approved/regulated sites and various other infrastructure, they may be the only country that can save money staying nuclear.
Of course, being a LFTR stan I would push for mass manufactured LFTRs the size of a couple shipping containers that can be decommissioned on a regular basis. 50 big nuclear plants replaced with about 1000 or more shipping container sized reactors on a replacement schedule.
LFTR would reduce waste, and separation of other fission products could be done elsewhere.
WHat is the French resistance to LFTR? I know that the US has strange bureaucratic resistances to LFTR built into academic funding and their regulatory agencies as an artifact of the ORNL reactor vs PWR reactor politics from the 1950s.
If France just piggybacking on the solid fuel rod reprocessing industry of the US and its same resistance to new reactor designs?