Macron humiliated: France facing blackouts as 10 nuclear reactors shut over safety fears

FRANCE is reportedly facing blackouts as 10 of its nuclear reactors have shut down, spelling chaos for President Emmanuel Macron.

The latest nuclear shutdown in France was announced by state energy giant EDF today. They said cracks were found near welds on a safety cooling system for two reactors at the Civaux plant in central France during routine safety checks. And EDF decided to shut down another two reactors at its Chooz plant in the eastern Ardennes region as a precaution because they are built to the same design.

Karine Herviou, deputy chief executive of the French nuclear safety regulator IRSN, said: “The defects that were identified on the last-generation reactors have been found on another reactor.

“We don’t know if there are problems elsewhere. EDF is in the process of checking all of its data.”

Now, 10 nuclear reactors out of France’s 56-strong fleet are currently out of service.

This accounts for about 20 percent of the country’s nuclear capacity – which makes up around 70 percent of the country's power

Repairing the defective pipes could lead to long shutdowns at the affected plants and put a further financial strain on heavily-indebted EDF.

Worryingly for France, many of its nuclear power stations are coming to the end of their expected lifespans of 40 years.

On Wednesday, it announced extra delays and cost overruns for its new-generation nuclear plant in Flamanville in northern France.

Now, EDF said the Flamanville plant will not be loaded with fuel until the “second quarter of 2023”.

And the projected costs had increased by another €300million (£250.6million) to €12.7billion (£10.6billion)

This is about four times more than the initial forecast of €3.3billion (£2.76billion).

It comes after Javier Blas, Bloomberg's chief Energy Correspondent, said France was already "struggling to keep the lights on".

All these nuclear shutdowns may not bode well for the French President, who has vowed to invest more in the technology and build more plants.

In fact, he has repeatedly claimed that nuclear technology is a zero-emission energy source and is vital for the clean energy transition.

Back in November, Mr Macron announced that “for the first time in decades, we will restart construction of nuclear reactors in our country” to “guarantee France’s energy independence”.

Paris has been leading the charge for nuclear power to be recognised by the European Union as a green technology eligible for a carbon-neutral investment.

The EU’s green taxonomy is intended to hand a green badge to companies and activities – or to withhold it – to “help shift investments where they are most needed".

This is part of the bloc’s aim to direct funding towards energy sources with a low or zero carbon footprint.

But many environmentalists are concerned about nuclear energy’s worry huge cost, safety and the legacy of toxic radioactive waste.

And France’s calls to include nuclear in the EU taxonomy has also faced backlash from other members of the bloc, including Germany.

Unlike France, which has had to reluctantly shut down its nuclear plants, Germany is in the process of shutting all its nuclear plants on purpose.

And now with the Green party involved in the new ruling coalition, the country’s disapproval of the energy source has grown even stronger.

France has got plenty of mountains and mountain streams for hydro power. The French just need to discover Pelton turbines and how to use them.

C'mon man, stop using logic and making sense.

You are talking about France, the country that invented perfume because they stunk so much and gravy to cover the taste of spoiled meat.

I'm surprised that they are still using gasoline in cars, and nuke energy.

My last trip to Europe {in the 90s} on business was a business success, but was so sad to see the way that the entire European culture had degraded {mostly because of illegal immigration}.

I have a few questions for a smarter Freeper who knows something about nuclear energy both in North America and France….

In North America, nuclear is regarded as a baseline power supplier since generally, it’s an on-off thing. The nuclear power plants here can’t increase or decrease output to follow the demands of the grid…. it seems that for the most part, they are either in on or off mode. Thus when wind and solar go up and down like a yo-yo and get priority access to the grid, this means the constantly changing demand and excess/shortfall of the grid has to be accommodated by other types of power producers (gas or coal which can generally increase or decrease supply, or hydraulic which just means that the water is spilled around the turbines). First of all… is that description (which is admittedly a vast oversimplification) generally correct?

However, in France 70% of their electrical power comes from nuclear even though they have the same daily fluctuation on their grid. It seems logical to assume that this means that their nuclear reactors must have some capabilities to increase/decrease that is not generally the case with the North America nuclear generators. At least, I don’t think France is using any kind of massive storage to ride through the daily ups and downs of the grid demands. The question is, how are they technically doing it? This is obviously too complicated a question to adequately answer here but is there a decent resource that speaks to this issue?

This question relates to the previous one…. It’s clear that there are forces afoot who think that coal generators should be shut down and it’s obvious that wind and solar aren’t going to come close to making up the power deficit that would be created if there was no coal generation and if nothing else, there always has to be backup. The IUs (interruptible/unreliables) are exactly that and are worthless when there is no wind or sun shining. This would seem to mean that North America needs to embark on a significant nuclear capabilities effort and new ones being considered will need to have the turndown capabilities that seem to be the case in France. We really aren’t hearing much about ramping up nuclear generating capabilities (at least it doesn’t seem like there is much public discussion)… but are there a lot of offline talks going on about increasing nuclear capabilities in North America? Are there any nuclear plants currently operating in North America that have the kind of turndown operating capabilities that is being assumed to be the case in France?

The article said that “cracks were found near welds on a safety cooling system”….. Any thoughts on what caused the cracks? How serious is this? Cracks always seem to relate to ‘metal fatigue’ and in the case of generators that have turndown capabilities, it makes me wonder if the constantly changing output modes relate to what was found.

Appreciate very much any information that can be provided…..

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