It looks like France and the UK will be in trouble this winter!
The core baseload of the European grid is in trouble, and there is no back up. If the rest of Europe had enough coal or nuclear power, this wouldn’t be so bad, but they were all too worried about heatwaves in 2100 they forgot…
This is bad news for Europe. Half of France’s nuclear power fleet were already out of action and EDF was hoping to bring “all of them” back online for winter. But they’ve just announced that at least four plants they planned to restart will suffer a major delay. France’s electricity prices have hit €1,000 per MWh for January delivery. (Which is a blockbuster $1,500 AUD).
France’s large nuclear fleet is normally a major exporter of electricity, referred to as the “backbone” of the whole European grid. Blackouts are not only being forecast in France, but there is growing recognition that they are now more likely in the UK too. Where else will this spread?
To make matters worse, a week ago, a pipe ruptured during a safety test at the Civaux plant. This is the same plant where corroded welds were discovered in August last year, but this is “absolutely not a weld that gave way” this time, which sounds ominous. When they shut Civaux down last year, they also shut down another 12 reactors built to the same design — which paradoxically are the newest reactors in the nuclear fleet and only about 20 years old. Such is the urgency, that currently 500 specialist welders are working on these plants, about 100 of those have come from the US and Canada.