The site of the Cattenom power plant in Moselle, October 17, 2017 (AFP/Archives/JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VERHAEGEN)
EDF has postponed the restart of five nuclear reactors in the context of a wage strike on certain sites, we learned from the company on Saturday.
Social movements can “have an impact on the schedule for the return to production of certain reactors”, indicated a spokesperson for the group to AFP. “For reactors in production, this can result in temporary power drops,” she added.
EDF has thus updated on its site the date of restart of several reactors, without however saying to what extent these delays were linked to the social movement: Cattenom 1, Cruas 2 and 3, Saint-Alban 2 and Tricastin 3.
These delays range from one day to nearly three weeks depending on the reactor.
EDF counted social movements on six sites on Friday. The nuclear power plants on strike for wages renewed their movement on Friday for the weekend, which seems to be spreading slowly but surely.
This movement aims to put pressure on the wage negotiations of companies in the energy sector and in particular EDF, where a first meeting is scheduled for Tuesday.
If this strike has no impact at this stage for the general public and essentially weighs on EDF’s finances, it could “impact the timetable” for the return of nuclear units to the network, most of the power plants in strike being subject to maintenance operations, said Friday to AFP Claude Martin, of the FNME-CGT.
“We are now at 30 reactors out of 56 in operation, we will go to around 40 in the next few weeks, the objective is to go to 45 in January,” President Emmanuel Macron said in a television interview on Wednesday. “This objective, everything indicates that we will keep it,” he said.
With the approach of winter, France is weakened due to nuclear electricity production at its lowest, linked to works or corrosion problems on part of its nuclear reactors. And it can hardly count on its hydraulic production, reduced due to the drought.
The RTE network manager had judged in September the risk of tension on the electricity network this winter “increased” but “controllable thanks to a strong mobilization” in favor of energy savings.
© 2022 AFP
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