And five. This Thursday, a corrosion problem on the safety system of one of the reactors at the Penly nuclear power plant (Seine-Maritime) was detected, a new setback, while four other reactors are affected by this incident.
The incident prompted the EDF Group to reduce its forecast for nuclear electricity production for 2022 “to 300 – 330 TWh, once morest 330 – 360 TWh”, due to “the extension of the shutdown period of these reactors”. Due to strong tensions on the electricity market, the French sector is particularly under scrutiny, fearing that the supply will dry up.
Corrosion problems accumulate and raise fears of shutting down other reactors. Until now, this type of incident had only been identified on 1,450 megawatt reactors. The fault detected at Penly 1, a 1,300 MW reactor, is the first to affect another family of reactors.
The problem identified at Penly “would also be due to a phenomenon of stress corrosion, that is to say the same phenomenon that was detected” on the 1,450 MW reactors, said Karine Herviou, referring to “a fault in the order of a millimeter ”.
The shutdown of the four Civaux and Chooz reactors in the middle of December, also affected by corrosion, deprived France of 10% of its nuclear capacity and caused the already very high electricity prices to jump in the region. Marlet.
“The performance of checks, the instruction of technical solutions and their deployment lead EDF to extend the shutdown of the reactors of Civaux 1, Civaux 2, Chooz 1, Chooz 2 and Penly 1”, warned Thursday evening the public group of energy.
The RTE network manager has recently increased its level of vigilance on the supply of electricity to France while the availability of the nuclear fleet, also upset by the pandemic, is at its lowest.
How many reactors are affected?
France, which derives the vast majority of its electricity from nuclear power, had 10 out of 56 reactors unavailable on Thursday and was deprived of 20% of its capacity, at a time when consumption is high with the drop in temperatures. The question now is whether other reactors in the French fleet are affected by this corrosion problem.
“We don’t know if there are no problems elsewhere. EDF is in the process of reviewing all the records ”of checks carried out in the past on the park, said Karine Herviou. “It is impossible to exclude that other reactors of the 1300 MW series are affected,” said Yves Marignac, nuclear expert from the NégaWatt association.
“This poses a difficult problem for the authorities, which is whether we apply the same logic (as for the 1,450 MW reactors) and preventively shut down the reactors or if we prioritize electrical safety,” he said. added. Because “closing more 1,300 MW reactors would inevitably lead to supply disruptions”.
The new problems revealed on Thursday come at a time when France is questioning its energy future once morest a background of rising concerns regarding climate change. Nuclear power is one of the divisive themes of the presidential campaign, with candidates favorable to this energy (in particular on the right, to the far right but also to the PCF) and other hostiles (LFI and EELV in particular).
President Emmanuel Macron, who has not yet declared himself a candidate for a second term, announced in November that France would launch a new program to build nuclear reactors. For the moment, it is only building one of the new generation, the Flamanville EPR (Manche), which has experienced many delays. The last has just been announced on Wednesday: fuel loading has been postponed from the end of 2022 to the second quarter of 2023, for a bill increased by 300 million euros.
