There is a “need to anticipate” from these “coming summers” the way in which heat waves and droughts will be managed in EDF’s nuclear power plants, estimates the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) in a note published Monday. On April 13, EDF presented to the ASN college “its ADAPT project for adapting its nuclear power plants to climate change”, explains the nuclear policeman.
Global warming has an impact on the availability of water, an essential resource for cooling nuclear reactors. ASN reminded EDF of “the requirement to take into account the impacts of long-term climate change from the design of new reactors”, according to the note.
The government hopes to build at least six reactors, the first of which is to be commissioned from 2035-2037. The ASN warns against “the potential cumulative effects linked to the presence of several sites” on the edge of the same watercourse.
Anticipate the future, even “in the short term”
But the adaptation of nuclear power plants must also be anticipated in the “short term”, without waiting years, also underlines the Authority. “ASN reminded EDF of the need to anticipate the way in which the potential heat wave and drought situations of the coming summers will be managed, in view of the feedback from the year 2022”, she explains. .
Last summer, nuclear production was able to be maintained in part thanks to temporary changes to regulatory temperature limits beyond which water can no longer be discharged into the river.
For the Court of Auditors, which produced a report on this nuclear and climate subject in March, this summer of 2022 was “an accelerator in the consideration of adaptation to climate change for EDF, insofar as the group anticipated the occurrence of a similar episode, but on a more distant horizon of 15 or 20 years”.
In their report, the financial magistrates called on EDF to “strengthen its research” so that its cooling systems are more “low in water”, noting that “no innovation” was implemented on the existing fleet and noting, even more, “the absence of marked evolution” for future EPRs.