The French nuclear program was started without public or parliamentary discussion, read up on the Messmer plan, it was a spontaneous reaction to the oil crisis of 1973 and new deployments haven't happened in the 25 years. France has a plan to extend it's nuclear plants by another 10 years, but really it would have to replace them sooner or later.
Even in France the trend visible in other European countries will happen: Wind, solar combined with large-scale batteries or pumped storage hydropower. Those are more simple to construct with less resistance from today's public.
It is not going to happen. France's existing nuclear fleet will not replaced by new nukes when they reach end of life.
It is clear after three EPR projects have massively overrun in a row that Areva/EDF can't do it, and when faced by paying a foreign company to do it they will choose solar and wind instead.
Does the US not legislate that a NPP should be built with certain minimum amount of concrete that is far higher than needed? I read somewhere that lobbies inflate the cost so they will not be built, IDK if that's true.
And this has absolutely nothing to do with having to maintain a nuclear stockpile, because France unlike other nations in the European Union doesn't have nuclear weapons. /s
That's factually wrong. France has a program of nuclear building. We don't build a lot of plants in Europe, but we do.