> Also, I fail to see what they hope to accomplish with just one carrier.

Collaboration with other EU/NATO countries?

Their current nuclear powered carrier has participated in quite a few conflicts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_aircraft_carrier_Charle...

They kind of got embarrassed by the Turkish navy, as they got 'checked', while trying to blockade the Turkish aid to one of the Lybian factions. The Lybian civil war is a war were there are no good vs bad guys, just different factions. The French backed one is losing.

France realized their navy is not up to par. It is like a lap dog that is all bark, but doesn't have any power to bite:

After Turkish incident, France suspends role in NATO naval mission https://www.reuters.com/article/us-libya-security-france-nat...

France blasts ‘extremely aggressive’ Turkish intervention against NATO mission targeting Libyan arms

https://www.france24.com/en/20200617-france-blasts-extremely...

Turkey beats the french in Libya’s war // The U.N. dithers and Russia withers while Erdoğan flexes his Islamic muscle

https://www.amimagazine.org/2020/07/15/turkey-beats-the-fren...

This decision has been years in the making, seriously doubt that a single incident is more than a small building block for making that decision.

Erdogan interference in North Africa began shortly after the Arab spring. That's almost 10 years ago.

This is a short-term analysis, but the project is a long-term: it will not be ready during Macron's presidency anyway.

> We are acting in the long term: over the next few years we will build the nuclear propulsion systems for our SSBNs and SSNs. If our engineers did not design on-board nuclear boilers for decades, we would weaken this know-how and our sovereignty.

At the very least, they are relying on that nuclear knowledge when the French submarine fleet needs replacing in the future.

> Meaning that's a pork project for their nuclear industry.

France has a dependency on nuclear for it's civilian power generation as well. So it's a strategic industry to maintain just so that they can keep a market for engineers. Especially since the military ramifications make it hard to cross borders with that type of knowledge, even among allied countries.