Sadly, our nuclear program is neither modern nor well run. Our nuclear power plants are old and some are at the limit of their expiration date. Bad management and lobbying has made a huge gap in the knowledge of power plant building and management and now the price of new construction skyrockets.

Just look at the years in which the reactors were constructed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors#Franc...

From an American POV, your nuclear program is modern and well run. America's nuclear program is pretty embarrassing in comparison. Even older tech, well past expiration heavily reliant on government subsidies.

France got almost 75% of its electricity from fossil fuels in the mid-70s[1], so "never" is wrong.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electricity_production_by...

Well, 40-50 years is already a long time. It means that France made the shift before and ahead of other countries.

Technically, they were running their economy by burning wood/fats/oils for hundreds of years. However, in the context of energy, what matters most is what's happening right now and the total sum of global emissions prior to right now.

In the context of sentences involving the word "never", it does not matter when the thing that supposedly never happened did happen.