The French government will decide on whether or not to build a new generation of EPR reactors between 2021 and 2025, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported on Friday, citing a working document. France’s nuclear industry could be asked to draw an “industrial plan” by mid-2021 that would guarantee future EPR reactors are able to produce energy at a reasonable price, estimated between 60 and 70 euros per megawatt, AFP reported.
Reuters 26th Oct 2018 read more »
Emmanuel Macron will announce, mid-November, and no longer October 30, his new energy policy. The highlight is the closure of the last French coal plants, and perhaps the construction of third generation nuclear power plants.
Europe1 24th Oct 2018 read more »
EXCLUSIVE. EPR project in St-Laurent-des-Eaux (Loir-et-Cher): farmers are already preparing for resistance. Pending the publication of the multiannual energy program that will validate or not the creation of future reactors EPR, EDF seeks to acquire land around the current plants. But in Saint-Laurent-des-Eaux (Loir-et-Cher), farmers are not sellers.
France3 25th Oct 2018 read more »
It is another rebound in the series of the closure of the Alsatian nuclear power plant in Fessenheim. Thursday, October 25, the State Council canceled the decree of April 8, 2017, which repealed the authorization to operate this facility. The government will have to take a new decree in this direction, but this new event does not change the announced shutdown of the two reactors of the Upper Rhine, of which only the date remains uncertain.
Le Monde 25th Oct 2018 read more »
Environmental campaigners fear the French government will not close any nuclear reactors before 2029, apart from those already slated for the axe at Fessenheim, in line with demands by EDF, they said on Wednesday. The government will likely emphasise the battle against climate change in order justify a decision to keep 56 of France’s 58 reactors, which emit very almost no CO2, in service until 2029, anti-nuclear campaigners and experts told Montel.
Montel 24th Oct 2018 read more »
France needs to make available new storage capacity or enable the use of mixed oxide (MOX) fuel in more reactors as part of an effort to make sure existing storage capacity is not used up in the coming 10 years, the regulator ASN has said. ASN also said that any decision to reduce production from reactors which consume MOX fuel should be accompanied by reduced generation from reactors which consume traditional nuclear fuel which uses enriched natural uranium. This would help reduce inventories and would also solve a potential problem caused by increased stocks of plutonium from the reprocessing of spent fuel. This plutonium cannot be stored for any length of time before it is used in MOX fuel because fission products accumulate in it and it must be reprocessed again.
Nucnet 23rd Oct 2018 read more »
French utility EDF said on Thursday that electricity generation at its 3,600 megawatts (MW) Tricastin nuclear plant could be restricted from Oct. 27 due to the forecast flow rate of the Rhone river where it draws water to cool the reactors. The Tricastin plant in the southeast of France has four 900 megawatt reactors. Low river levels and flow rate due to dry weather conditions have forced EDF, which operates France’s 58 nuclear reactors, to reduce power generation at several reactors in the past weeks.
Reuters 25th Oct 2018 read more »