French Cracks

Posted: 30th January 2023

Cracking under pressure: Inside the race to fix France’s nuclear plants. Behind layers of security and a thick concrete wall, a team of welders work in shifts to fix the crippled Penly nuclear plant in northern France. Sweating under protective gear, they’re replacing cracked pipes in the emergency cooling system which protects against a reactor meltdown. Each weld takes at least three days to complete, with workers often on their knees or backs to reach for the correct angle. Even in radiation suits, health regulations limit work in that environment to a maximum 40 hours a year. The complicated procedures, replicated across sites this winter, have hampered the ability of Electricite de France to get its reactors back online after lengthy shutdowns. Deadlines have slipped. The two Penly reactors were scheduled to be back online this month and next. Instead, EDF has been forced to delay the restarts to May and June. The crisis is far from over, and EDF needs to find a way to avoid a repeat next winter. That challenge — finding problems, fixing them, doing checks — is already a mammoth task, and it’s being compounded by financial issues and staff shortages. Macron’s government wants to help EDF build six new large reactors and begin preparatory studies on another eight units by 2050. But building 14 new reactors is “absolutely not within EDF’s reach with its current balance sheet,” said Celine Cherubin, a senior credit officer at Moody’s Investors Service. Beyond the full nationalization, a more favorable regulation for EDF may still be needed to help it meet its investment needs, she said. EDF is also trying to restore its technical credibility, coming up with a new version of the reactors it is building in the U.K. and France that have been dogged with cost overruns. The bigger question is whether EDF and the government can now reverse the sense of decline in France’s nuclear industry. “This nuclear fleet is a strength, it’s our independence,” Sophie Mourlon, head of the energy directorate at the Energy Transition Ministry, said at a nuclear conference in Paris in October. But when it’s not working properly, “it’s also our Achilles’ heel.”