French EdF shuts down two reactors, extends outages

Two French nuclear reactors will go off line this week for maintenance, curtailing French nuclear availability by 3GW until the end of January, pushing the French January peak-load contract close to €1,000/MWh.

The 1.5GW Chooz 1 and Chooz 2 nuclear reactors will be shut down by the end of this week until 23 January, EdF said yesterday, adding that the duration of the outage may be extended further. This decision comes as defaults were detected on the Civaux nuclear plant during a decennial safety visit, which uses the same technology as the Chooz unit.

The outage on the 1.5GW Civaux 1 nuclear reactor also has been pushed back to 30 April 2022, from 1 March initially scheduled, to allow EdF to replace the defected parts of the reactor. The 1.5GW Civaux 2 reactor will not return to the grid before 31 March 2022, although the plant was initially due to be available from 24 December.

The extension of these two outages will result in a loss of 1TWh output by the end of 2021, EdF said.

Nuclear unavailability for January was revised upwards to a 10GW average, after being scheduled at 6.4GW yesterday. It was down by 7.1GW on the month and by 400MW compared with January 2021. Unavailable capacity in the first quarter of 2022 is set to average 13.3GW, up from 10.6GW scheduled before the outages.

French transmission system operator (TSO) RTE in November warned about risks of power supply issues in January and February in the case of extension of nuclear outages.

Following the announcement, the January contract traded at €645/MWh today on the EEX exchange platform for base load, up by €260/MWh on the day, while peak load traded at €999.98/MWh.

In comparison, the January contract has been assessed at an average €390.31/MWh in December, peaking at €410/MWh on 8 December, and up by €120.05/MWh from its average in November, Argus data show.

The first quarter 2022 was assessed at an average of €340.60/MWh in December, extending its premium to Belgium to €78.25/MWh on 15 December from €19/MWh on 1 October, when it became the front quarter.

By Tatiana Serova