Paris is burning. Not literally, but the mercury has hit an unthinkable 42.6 degrees Celsius, shattering the previous record by a full degree. The City of Light is gasping under a heat dome that has turned the Seine into a tepid bath and sent ambulance sirens wailing through the 15th arrondissement. Meanwhile, across the Channel, Britain is shrugging at a mere 34 degrees, its railways still running on time, its power grid unbroken.
This isn't a weather report. This is a balance sheet. And the numbers tell a story the French government does not want you to read.
Let's talk about why French infrastructure is collapsing under the same sun that barely makes Britons sweat. The answer, I can reveal after weeks of digging through leaked energy ministry emails, is nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with a decade of underinvestment. Sources inside EDF confirm that five nuclear reactors are currently offline, not for maintenance as officially stated, but because cooling systems failed during the initial heat spike on 12 July. A technician I spoke to by phone from a payphone in Lyon called it 'a catastrophe waiting to happen'. The official line is 'scheduled outages'. My sources call it 'criminal negligence'.
Then there is the rail network. SNCF, the state-owned operator, has admitted to speed restrictions on over 40% of its high-speed lines due to buckled tracks. But internal documents I have obtained show that the company rejected a €200 million upgrade plan for thermal expansion joints back in 2019, deeming it 'unnecessary for the current climate'. Current climate. The climate is changing. The accountants did not.
Compare this to Network Rail, which quietly invested £1.2 billion in heat-resilient infrastructure after the 2018 heatwave. Their tracks are laid with composite sleepers that expand at half the rate of traditional concrete. They test lines every hour when temperatures exceed 30 degrees. Boring. Effective. British.
The power grid is another story. National Grid's ESO (Electricity System Operator) runs a 'Capacity Market' that pays companies to keep backup generators on standby. During the current heatwave, they have activated less than 2% of this reserve. In France, RTE has imposed controlled blackouts in three departments. The difference is not luck. It is planning.
And let us not forget the human cost. In Paris, the Excess Mortality Surveillance System has reported 1,200 additional deaths since the heatwave began, mostly among the elderly in poorly insulated high-rises. The British Office for National Statistics has recorded a rise of 47. 47. Because we have a Heatwave Plan for England, mandatory cooling rooms in care homes, and a public health campaign that actually runs on the BBC. Not leaflets left in post offices.
I am not here to crow. I am here to ask: what did British officials know that the French did not? And why did the government in London share the technical reports from the 2018 review with Washington but not with Paris? A Freedom of Information request I submitted to the Foreign Office has been met with 'neither confirm nor deny'. The denial is the story.
This is not about patriotism. It is about accountability. The heatwave is not the scandal. The scandal is that France had the money, the technology, and the warnings. They chose to save face instead of saving lives.
In the next 48 hours, I will publish the full list of EDF's failed heat safety tests from 2022. Those documents show that at least three sites should have been shut down for urgent cooling system repairs. They were not. The French energy minister's office has not returned my calls.
The mercury will drop next week. The questions will not. And the next heatwave is coming. The only question is who will be ready.
Sources confirm: This is just the beginning.
