Looks like France will be kind of an insurer for energy market.

Trading the risk of energy supply shortage for the risk of radioactive accidents.

The overall radioactive waste in the environment will go down if coal plants in EU get replaced with nuclear plants in France, even if there would be future accidents at a similar rate per TW/h produced. Even more so if the coal mines get closed down, as those mines also tend to release a lot of radioactive waste into the environment.

Nuclear plants can in some way be seen as fossil fuel plants that store all the waste produced and only release anything if there is an accident. The fossil fueled plants do the opposite, constantly releasing a steady stream into the surrounding area with no risk of an single accident that release a large stored amount in a single instant.

France seems to be confident regarding nuclear safety.

Most of that engineering is done in-house as well. I wonder what explains this different attitude as compared to their neighbors.

Not quite. They're reducing their dependency on nuclear as well. Sure they might build some new reactors but they'll also close some old ones. It's expected that they will close more reactors than they will build.

In 20 years they will be pressured by their green neighbors to shut down and will be stuck with a pile of hard to get rid of nuclear junk.