> with the president of the EDF at the time Marcel Boiteux, who said that this will happen, but it's not a big deal because it will happen after the plants had reached their EOL in 30 years.

That's not what he said. He said this is the scenario in case of full cycle up and down every day. Which is obviously not how a central is operated.

Consensus today is that nuclear powerplant can live for around 60-80y without issues if the maintenance is done properly. The US park is getting there.

> This simply wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been necessary, the government wouldn't have allowed it at the time.

The government has no word to say over an ASN decision, specially when Nuclear safety is at stake.

It is France we are talking about, not the USSR.

Again, it is commonly admitted today, after the facts, that it was over-reacting. Thats said: It is bad economically as it cost EDF few billions. But it is exactly what you want to see for safety: Better overreacting than having an incident.

> A few years pass again and some people are talking themselves again into this technology being anything except useless.

So. You are taking one single year failure as a representative example of a technology that has given cheap, abundant and low carbon electricity for the entire Europeean continent for 3 decades ?

Do you have not the impression of being of slightly bad faith here ?