The 26 French nuclear reactors now closed should have restarted their electricity production during the winter, EDF management announced on Wednesday, under pressure ahead of a tense season on the energy security front.
France is facing an exceptional unavailability of its fleet of 56 reactors: the “effective” maintenance of this grid return schedule will play a fundamental role in electricity management this winter, RTE, the grid manager, warned on Wednesday.
At the origin of this situation, the delay in ten-year maintenance, due to Covid, and the discovery last winter of corrosion problems, forced EDF to carry out an almost general inspection. Before the deputies on Wednesday, the general director of EDF, Jean-Bernard Lévy, indicated that “the sites related to corrosion are advancing at a good pace: Tricastin 1, the first, is finished.”
“To date, 27 reactors are connected to the network”
As for the restart of the 26 reactors currently shut down, five are due to restart in September, five in October, followed by an additional seven in November, three in December, three in January and two in February, explained Cédric Lewandowski, CEO of EDF. A day 26 today in stoppage “fortuitous” should be restarted shortly.
“Our teams and those of our industrial partners are fully mobilized to bring as many reactors as possible back online by next winter,” he said, adding that the group now had “a means of non-destructive testing” to continue the corrosion diagnosis. But “we are facing an unexpected accumulation of activities, which mobilizes acute and rare skills, of pipers, welders, valve workers, boilermakers… This skills deficit affects our ability to repair at the rate we would like,” he said. .
“The positive dynamic is re-engaged”
The head of EDF, whose successor will be announced shortly, took the opportunity to resume his recent comments critical of the State’s nuclear strategy, comments considered “unacceptable” by Emmanuel Macron. On Wednesday he insisted on the impact of Fukushima and “the political context of 2012”, then favorable to the exit of nuclear energy. Today “the positive dynamic has been reactivated (in favor of nuclear energy, editor’s note), with the Belfort speech in particular, but it will take time, it is industrial time,” he said.
“If ten years ago we could have started up two or three reactors, we could have had them”, these specialized workers, he points out. After having planned to reduce the wings of nuclear energy, a decision recorded in a 2015 law, France chose to relaunch the atom, by the voice of Emmanuel Macron, who in Belfort in February wanted the construction of six new EPR-type reactors.
Source: BFM TV
