amortize the 56 existing reactors as much as possible – 37 years old on average age – is part of EDF’s strategy. It was no later than 2026 that the nuclear security authority hopes to decide on the principle or not of a possible extension beyond six decades.
by Adrien Pécout
Reflection on a possible extension of French nuclear reactors up to 80 years “is not a taboo at all”. At least according to the highly commented words of Cédric Lewandowski, executive director of the EDF group, the fleet operator. “The subject is to be put on the table,” he insisted, auditioned on January 19, during a commission of inquiry of the National Assembly on the sovereignty and energy independence of France.
amortize the 56 existing reactors as much as possible – 37 years old on average age – is part of EDF’s strategy. Strong indebted, the group, in the process of becoming a 100 % public again, intends to “make the best use of its” industrial heritage “, he reminds the world. Especially since he still awaits the commissioning of the EPR reactor of Flamanville (Manche), despite a first “concrete” flowed in 2007, while preparing for the possibility of new projects wanted by the government for six “EPR 2 “.
In the country, the reactors operate without a priori limitation of duration – to the chagrin of the anti -nuclear movement, which alerts the issue of radioactive waste. Every ten years, an in -depth review for each unit, however, makes it possible to determine whether it is able to operate ten more years. A crucial step under the supervision of an independent entity, the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN).
aging of materials
In 2021, it opened the “perspective of a continuation of operation” up to 50 years for the 32 oldest reactors, those with a power of 900 megawatts (MW) each. All this subject to the fourth ten -year visit. A step as much more important as “a hypothesis of forty years of operation” existed during the design of these reactors, underlines the ASN.
EDF has already started studies in order to exploit these first units during “sixty years and more”. It is a question, explains the electrician, of “demonstrating in particular the capacity of equipment such as containment speakers and reactor tanks to ensure their function”. Essential equipment, underlines Julien Collet, deputy director general of ASN, due to the “international consensus on the fact that these two components are not replaceable under reasonable conditions”.
It was at the latest in 2026 that the nuclear security authority hopes to decide on the principle or not of a possible extension beyond six decades. “In 2016 [before the cycle of the fourth ten -year visits] added Mr. Collet, we asked EDF to also transmit a file on the operation of the 900 MW tanks up to 60 years, but EDF had only transmitted that Up to 50 years. “An” work of anticipation “to be carried out,” knowing that the oldest reactors in France will only reach 60 years in twenty years “.
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