This return to service allows the French electrical network to turn with 40 reactors connected out of 56, on the eve of an announced drop in temperatures.
MO12345LEMONDE with AFP
Electrcité de France (EDF) announced Friday, December 9, the restoration of two additional nuclear reactors on Friday, December 9, allowing the French electrical network to shoot with 40 reactors connected out of 56, on the eve of an announced decrease in temperatures.
EDF’s data show that the Bugey 3 reactors, near Grenoble, and Dampierre 3, in the Loiret, restarted, knowing that Cattenom 4, in Lorraine, resumed electricity production on Wednesday evening. According to EDF, which has around 70 % of French households as customers and 55 % to 60 % of companies, the 40 trendy reactors bring to 39 gigawatts (GW) the available power. The French nuclear park has a maximum installed power of more than 61 GW.
France is this year, for the first time in forty-two years, clear importer of electricity, because the level of production of nuclear electricity is at the lowest, due to programmed maintenance but sometimes prolonged, or corrosion problems that required long repairs. The Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, is on the move Friday with the new CEO of EDF, Luc Rémont, at the Penly, Normandy power plant, whose reactors are stopped and must restart at Beginning of 2023.
Decrease in electricity consumption 2>
Programmed rotating cuts of a maximum of two hours could occur during the winter if the calls to reduce electricity consumption are not sufficiently respected. An Ecowatt signal system has been set up to prevent consumers in advance, counting three levels: green if all goes well, orange when the system is tense and red when the alert level is maximum and that it is necessary redouble their efforts to save energy, for example do not connect your oven, cut your heating, etc.
For the time being, the high -voltage line network manager, RTE, observes a drop in electricity consumption despite the cold: – 8.3 % over a week compared to the average of the period 2014-2019. EDF estimates, for its part, the decline to-10 % in November, compared to November 2021.
RTE and the electricity distributor Enedis also organize a national exercise on Friday, associating the prefectures, to test their procedures and their modes of communications in the event of load shedding, with simulations of several scenarios on computer. It is by no means a cut of cuts on the population.