The French nuclear industry welcomes the orientations of the industrial programme

On 13 March 2026, players in the French nuclear industry welcomed the orientations defined under the national industrial programme.

The French nuclear industry is a broad industrial ecosystem: beyond the operator, it comprises manufacturers of heavy components, valve, pipework and control system companies, as well as engineering consultancies and specialist maintenance firms.

The main challenge identified by manufacturers is that of skills and workload. Building new reactors means rebuilding know-how partly lost during the years of low activity, notably in welding, boilermaking and large project engineering.

Multi-year visibility is the precondition for these investments: training qualified welders or building a heavy equipment plant requires knowing the order book over a decade.

This issue goes beyond nuclear alone: the power grid sector, with its 1,600 companies and 100,000 jobs, faces the same need for visibility in order to size its industrial capacity.