The group maintains its nuclear production forecast for 2022.
Four reactors nuclearaffected by corrosion problems, will see their shutdown extended by several weeks this fall, a delay that could strain the country’s electricity supply a little more and fuel 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 recognizes that production would reach “most likelythe bottom of that range, via a spokesperson on Thursday.
Read alsoEDF suffers a historic loss of 5.3 billion
This extension is linked toa better guess» the time required to carry out the investigations and repair work, he adds. Between planned maintenance operations and shutdowns related to this subject of corrosion, 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 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 corrosionunder constraintresults 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 affected by the outage extension are: Cattenom 1 (return to the network now scheduled for November 1), Cattenom 3 (December 11), Cattenom 4 (November 14), and Penly 1 (January 23, 2023).
Load shedding as a last resort
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 under maintenance to make up for the delays imposed by the confinement period linked to Covid. EDF had already had to revise its estimate of annual nuclear production in mid-May. However, in mid-July, before the Senate, a senior EDF official wanted to be reassuring, referring to “very strong chance» to spend the winter without load shedding.
Read alsoThe State takes EDF out of the stock market for 9.7 billion euros
“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.“, had declared Marc Benayoun, executive director of EDF in charge of the pole customers, services and territories, and a fortiori “whether the gas stocks are normally full“. On Thursday, France had filled its gas stocks for the winter to 90%, according to the European platform Aggregated Gas Storage Inventory (AGSI), and was on the right track to meet its 100% objectives in order to face this winter of potential war-related shortages in Ukraine. During a press briefing Thursday on electrical resources, the Ministry of Energy Transition for its part judged that the load shedding would be “only a last resort“.
SEE ALSO – Should new nuclear power plants be built?