The partial closure is not unique: About half of France’s individual fleet, Europe’s largest, has been shut down as a whirlwind of problems swirls around the country’s state-backed nuclear power plant, Électricité de France, or EDF . As the European Union moves to sever ties with Russian oil and gas in the aftermath of Moscow’s war against Ukraine, France has been betting on its nuclear power plants to deal with an impending energy crisis. Nuclear power supplies about 70 percent of France’s electricity, more than any other country in the world. However, the industry has fallen into an unprecedented power crisis as EDF faces problems ranging from the mysterious appearance of stress-induced corrosion inside nuclear power plants to a warmer climate that makes it difficult to cool aging reactors. Holidays at EDF, Europe’s largest electricity exporter, have pushed France’s nuclear power to its lowest level in nearly 30 years, pushing French electricity bills to record highs as the war in Ukraine sparks wider inflation. Instead of supplying huge amounts of electricity to Britain, Italy and other European countries based on Russian oil, France is facing the worrying prospect of starting a power outage this winter and needing to import electricity. The EDF, already in debt of 43 billion euros (about $ 45 billion), is also exposed to a recent deal involving Russian state-owned nuclear power plant Rosatom, which could bring new financial pain to the French company. The problems have escalated so quickly that the government of President Emanuel Macron has hinted that the EDF may need to be nationalized. “We can not rule it out,” Energy Minister Anies Panier-Roonacher said on Tuesday. “We will need huge investments in EDF.” The crack could not have struck at a worse time. Oil prices hit record highs after the European Union agreed to cut off Russian oil, intensifying economic pain in Europe and exacerbating the cost-of-living crisis that France and other countries are struggling to cope with. The price of gas used by France to offset fluctuations in nuclear energy has also risen. As Russian aggression redefines Europe’s energy concerns, proponents of nuclear power say it could help bridge Europe’s fuel shortage, completing a shift already under way to adjust for wind, solar and other renewables. to achieve ambitious goals for climate change. But correcting the crisis in the EDF will not be easy. With 56 reactors, France’s individual fleet is the largest after the United States. A quarter of Europe’s electricity comes from nuclear power in about a dozen countries, with France producing more than half of the total. But the French nuclear industry, built mainly in the 1980s, has been plagued by decades of lack of new investment. Experts say it has lost valuable know-how as people retired or moved on, affecting EDF’s ability to maintain existing power plants – or build them to replace them. “EDF’s strategy, approved by the government, was to delay the reinvestment and transformation of the system,” said Yves Marignac, a nuclear energy expert at négaWatt, a think tank in Paris. “The more EDF delays, the more skills are lost, technical problems accumulate and there is an avalanche effect.” Mr Macron recently announced a € 51.7 billion plan to rebuild France’s nuclear program. EDF will build the first of up to 14 next-generation mammoth pressurized water reactors by 2035, as well as smaller nuclear power plants – the cornerstone of a broader effort to strengthen France’s energy independence and achieve climate goals. But the few new nuclear reactors EDF has built have suffered huge cost overruns and delays. A pressurized water reactor being built by EDF at Hinkley Point in south-west England will not be operational until 2027 – four years behind schedule and too late to help Britain’s rapid turnover from Russian oil and natural gas. gas. Finland’s newest nuclear power plant, which started operating last month, is expected to be completed in 2009. EDF’s recent troubles began to escalate shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine. The company warned last winter that it could no longer produce a stable nuclear power supply as it struggled to make up for a two-year delay in maintenance required for dozens of aging reactors that were delayed during a coronavirus lockdown. Inspections revealed worrying safety issues – particularly corrosion and defective seals in critical systems used to cool the reactor core of a reactor. This was the situation at the Chinon nuclear power plant, one of the oldest in France, which produces 6% of EDF’s nuclear power. EDF is now examining all its nuclear facilities for such problems. A dozen reactors will remain disconnected for corrosion inspections or repairs that may take months or years. Another 16 remain offline for reviews and upgrades. Others have to cut back on energy due to climate change concerns: rivers in southern France, including the Rhone and the Gironde, heat up earlier each year, often reaching temperatures in the spring and summer that are too hot to cool reactors. Today, French nuclear production is at its lowest level since 1993, producing less than half of the 61.4 gigawatts the fleet is capable of producing. (EDF also generates electricity with renewable energy technologies, gas and coal.) Even if some reactors restart in the summer, France’s nuclear output will be 25 percent lower than usual this winter – with worrying consequences.
The Russia-Ukraine war and the world economy
Card 1 of 7 An extensive conflict. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has had a ripple effect on the world, intensifying the suffering of the stock market. The conflict has caused dizzying increases in gas prices and shortages of products, and has prompted Europe to reconsider its dependence on Russian energy sources. Russia’s economy is slowing. Although pro-Ukrainian countries continue to impose sanctions on the Kremlin in response to its aggression, the Russian economy has so far avoided a crippling collapse thanks to capital controls and interest rate hikes. However, the head of Russia’s central bank warned that the country is likely to face a sharp economic downturn as its stock of imported goods and spare parts is low. Trade barriers are growing. The invasion of Ukraine has also unleashed a wave of protectionism as governments, desperate to secure goods for their citizens amid shortages and rising prices, are raising new barriers to halting exports. But restrictions make products more expensive and even harder to find. The prices of basic metals are soaring. The price of palladium, used in car exhaust systems and mobile phones, has skyrocketed amid fears that Russia, the world’s largest exporter of the metal, could be cut off from world markets. The price of nickel, another major Russian export, has also risen. “If you have power plants that run well below capacity, we should either go for power outages or go back to coal, gas or gas,” said Thierry Bros, an energy expert and professor. at the Institut de Paris. Political Studies. The government, which owns 84 percent of EDF, has added to the controversy. As electricity prices in the market approached 500 euros per megawatt-hour last winter, Mr Macron ordered EDF to increase the power it sells to third-party providers at a maximum price of just 46 euros per megawatt-hour, fulfilling its political commitment to protect the French. households from inflation. However, in order to repair its power supplies while dozens of nuclear power plants are offline, EDF was forced to buy electricity at high open market prices, at an estimated cost of more than 10 billion euros this year. The move so outraged EDF’s militant CEO Jean-Bernard Lévy that he formally appealed to the government. As unrest escalates, the French government dropped a € 2 billion lifebuoy on the EDF in February. But that is not enough to solve his troubles. The debt-ridden company is also facing risks with a government-backed deal linked to Rosatom, a longtime customer of EDF components and the largest buyer of French-made powerful Arabelle steam turbines, located at both Rosatom and EDF nuclear power plants. Despite the war, France traded as usual with Russia in the field of nuclear energy, which remained free from European Union sanctions. Mr Macron backed an agreement in February for the € 1.1 billion acquisition of Arabelle Turbine by EDF from General Electric, restoring the French company to ownership after GE bought it from Alstom in 2015. EDF is now seeking a lower valuation of the deal amid fears that Rosatom’s business could stumble after Finland canceled Rosatom contracts for new nuclear power plants last month. Should Rosatom face additional cancellations or construction delays in other countries, EDF could face a drop in turbine orders and new losses. For the French nuclear industry to recover, the country’s best bet is to stick to the plan to build a fleet of new nuclear power plants, JPMorgan Chase said in a recent analysis. “If nothing else, the current crisis makes this work and ambition to reorganize EDF’s nuclear fleet or nationalize it, more legitimately than ever – for France and its European partners,” the bank said. Adèle Cordonnier contributed to the petition.
