France’s EDF under pressure to end all outages of nuclear reactors

French energy group EDF has promised to restart all of its 32 nuclear reactors that are currently offline for maintenance and corrosion problems, the French energy minister said, as the government raises pressure on the state-controlled utility to end a spate of outages.

More than half of France’s 56 reactors have been shut in recent months. The shutdowns have weighed on electricity supply across Europe and pushed prices higher just as Russian gas becomes scarce, while turning France into a net power importer over the summer from Britain and other neighbours to whom it usually exports.

French energy minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher said on Friday that EDF aimed to end all of the closures in the coming months.

“EDF has committed to restarting all its reactors for this winter,” Pannier-Runacher told a news conference.

Some of the restarts correspond to the end of summer repair programmes, and the government would “closely follow with EDF” the progress of reactors affected by the corrosion issues discovered last December, Pannier-Runacher added.

EDF declined to comment.

“It’s a form of pressure on EDF to keep its engagements between now and February,” Nicolas Goldberg, a senior manager at energy consultancy Columbus Consulting said of the energy minister’s announcement.

Filings with grid operator RTE show that the reactors are due to come online again between September and February.

EDF, which is 84 per cent owned by the state, is set to come fully under government control again in the coming weeks in a buyout of minority shareholders, in part as France tries to shore up its defences to deal with Europe’s energy crisis.

French president Emmanuel Macron and his ministers have stepped up warnings in the past fortnight about the efforts that will be required during winter months, urging households and businesses to work on energy efficiency measures now.

The government has spent heavily to protect consumers and businesses with a 4 per cent price cap on electricity among other measures, and has signalled it will prolong them in some form next year.

It has also drawn up lists of the industries that would be temporarily cut off if shortages occurred, even though ministers have said they do not anticipate such measures for now based on current winter forecasts.

“If it came down to rationing, companies would be the first affected,” prime minister Elisabeth Borne told a business conference in Paris on Monday.

EDF had cut its output forecasts to three-decade lows for 2022 in recent months, and has not adjusted them upwards, leaving some doubt over how much supply will be alleviated in the short term — and whether the planned restart schedule is feasible.

Goldberg said that, based on the restart projections, France would be producing some 50 gigawatts of electricity a day by December, compared to between 20 and 30 gigawatts now. That would put it in line with last winter’s levels. France would still probably be a net importer for 2022 as a whole.