Four nuclear reactors, affected by corrosion problems, will see their shutdown extended for several weeks this fall, a delay which could strain the country’s electricity supply a little more and feed an already unprecedented surge in prices.
The price of electricity in France has been rising for several months, breaking all-time records: it reached 900 euros per megawatt hour on Thursday, for delivery next year, against less than 100 euros a year ago, and less of 50 euros ordinarily in previous years.
EDF, which published this new schedule on Wednesday evening, maintains its nuclear production forecast for 2022 between 280 and 300 terawatt hours (TWh), but acknowledges, through a spokesperson on Thursday, that production would reach ” most likely “ the bottom of this range. This extension is related to “a better guess” the time required to carry out the investigations and repair work, he adds.
Thirty-two reactors out of 56 are shut down
Between scheduled maintenance operations and corrosion-related shutdowns, 32 nuclear reactors were shut down on Thursday, out of a total of 56. The discovery, in recent months, of stress corrosion problems has led to the shutdown of shutdown of 12 reactors, the others being shut down for scheduled maintenance.
These corrosion problems were detected or suspected at the welds of the bends of the safety injection pipes (RIS) – which allow the reactor to be cooled in the event of an accident – connected to the primary circuit. This so-called “stress” corrosion results in small cracks. EDF proposed a method to check and solve these problems, validated at the end of July by the Nuclear Safety Authority, which gave its agreement for the group to control all of its reactors by 2025, by ultrasound .
The four reactors concerned by the extension of the outages are: Cattenom 1 (return to the network now scheduled for 1is November), Cattenom 3 (December 11), Cattenom 4 (November 14), and Penly 1 (January 23, 2023).
Load shedding, a “last resort solution”
EDF’s nuclear production is already at a historically low level, which has contributed to an unprecedented rise in wholesale electricity prices. Many other reactors are undergoing maintenance to make up for the delays imposed by the confinement period linked to Covid-19. EDF had already had to revise, in mid-May, its estimate of annual nuclear production.
However, in mid-July, before the Senate, a senior EDF official wanted to be reassuring. “There has not been a blackout in France since 1978 and, even if we are in a very difficult situation, there is still a very good chance that we will spend the winter without load shedding”, declared Marc Benayoun, executive director of EDF in charge of the customer, services and territories division. All the more “if the gas stocks are normally filled”.
On Thursday, France had filled its gas stocks for the winter to 90%, according to the European Aggregated Gas Storage Inventory (AGSI) platform, and was on the right track to meet its 100% objectives in order to face this winter, potential war-related shortages in Ukraine. During a press briefing on Thursday on electricity resources, the Ministry of Energy Transition, for its part, judged that load shedding would be only a last resort solution.