France’s ageing nuclear fleet paints bleak picture for now and future

As French President Emmanuel Macron places nuclear vitality on the coronary heart of his nation’s drive in direction of carbon neutrality, others are more and more questioning this concept, given the state of the nation’s nuclear energy crops.

France has the largest variety of nuclear reactors in Europe, 56 in complete, priding itself on being kind of autonomous on the subject of electrical energy manufacturing, with round 70-75% coming from nuclear and all run by state-owned EDF.

However this 12 months, almost half of the nation’s ageing nuclear fleet needed to be shut down on account of corrosion, summer season warmth waves or postponed upkeep, dramatically decreasing electrical output.

In a matter of months, France went from being Europe’s largest electrical energy exporter, to importing greater than it was sending out.

Chatting with Euronews, EDF director Jean-Marie Boursier, defended the necessity to import, in addition to export.

“There are occasions through the day after we export electrical energy after which there are occasions through the day after we are importing it since you realize that electrical energy can’t be saved,” Boursier mentioned.

“And there should at all times be a steadiness between manufacturing and consumption and subsequently relying on the time of day. Often, we’re exporters of electrical energy to Germany and different nations and infrequently we’re importers. So, it’s a must to steadiness.”

He added that his firm was working as exhausting as potential to restart all its reactors.

“We’re certainly doing our greatest to revive the total energy of our reactors,” the EDF director mentioned. “All my colleagues on the opposite websites are working exhausting day by day, in order that these reactors can return to manufacturing. 

“We’ve shutdowns for upkeep which are scheduled all year long and we needed to face, like the entire planet, the pandemic. 

“This meant that we needed to postpone a sure variety of [maintenance] stops through the COVID interval, which meant that we took off stops for upkeep. After which we even have just a few reactors which have been shut down for corrosion insurance policies.”

Winter is coming

For France and Europe, the shutdowns couldn’t have come at a worse time.

With winter quick approaching and the vitality markets nonetheless reeling from the warfare in Ukraine, the opportunity of blackouts should not a distant actuality.

France’s vitality minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher mentioned earlier this 12 months that EDF was working wholeheartedly to reopen all its nuclear reactors this winter to be able to keep away from such a state of affairs.

The vitality large EDF, which was nationalised by Macron’s authorities earlier this 12 months, additionally plans to assemble six new reactors on three present websites, with the primary purported to be prepared by round 2035.

It’s all a part of the French president’s drive to place nuclear vitality on the centre of the nation’s bid to attain carbon neutrality by 2050, one of many European Fee’s flagship commitments of its mandate.

However native activists within the Paluel space in Normandy, the place one energy plant is situated, say the estimated €50 billion to be spent on the brand new reactors could be higher spent on extra sustainable sources of electrical energy.

“The reactors won’t ever be prepared in 2035 or 2037, as introduced – it is a certainty and it is costing us a fortune,” Jean-Paul Desjardins, an area activist in Paluel instructed Euronews. 

“EDF is in deficit and bankrupt. It’s subsequently the State that pays, that’s to say, us, in fact. And with this cash, we may do a lot, rather more when it comes to renewable energies, like photo voltaic, wind energy, and greener transport.”

For Pauline Boyer of Greenpeace, nuclear vitality can also be not the best way ahead.

“President Macron stubbornly promotes the phantasm of nuclear energy as a local weather resolution, regardless of admitting that no new nuclear energy plant will produce electrical energy earlier than 2040,” Boyer mentioned earlier this 12 months. 

“Polluting, failing, costly and sluggish, nuclear vitality is neither ‘inexperienced’ nor ‘transitional’.”

Combine it up

Many specialists argue that you will need to have a mixture of completely different vitality sources to each meet Europe’s wants and its local weather objectives, one thing Boursier agrees with.

“We’ve to take a look at the issue of worldwide warming, which implies that we’ll progressively transfer from fossil fuels to electrical energies and, in fact, to supply this electrical vitality, it’s crucial to make use of applied sciences that emit little carbon,” the EDF director instructed Euronews.

“And so it’s a must to use low-carbon applied sciences. In these low-carbon applied sciences you have got renewables, photo voltaic, wind, hydraulics, that are of curiosity, after which you have got nuclear, which emits comparatively little carbon since research have proven that over the entire life cycle of a nuclear energy plant, there are six grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour. 

“And so the answer to battle international warming is to modify to electrical energies and completely no carbon within the environment.”

However with so many reactors presently beneath upkeep and the nation’s new nuclear fleet not due for a few years, most will likely be extra involved with the right here and now, relatively than what’s to come back sooner or later.