France approves study on extending nuclear reactors’ life.

 https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/french-presidency-green-light-looking-into-extending-lifespan-existing-nuclear-2023-02-03/

PARIS, Feb 3 (Reuters) – France has approved looking into the possibility of extending the lifespan of nuclear reactors to 60 years and beyond if safety rules allow it, the French Presidency said.

The Presidency announced the move in a statement after President Emmanuel Macron, who has announced plans to build at least six new reactors by 2050, on Friday chaired the first of a series of meetings on nuclear policy.

France historically has relied on nuclear power for around 70% of its energy, although the share is likely to have fallen last year as the nuclear fleet suffered repeated outages.

A public debate about the six new EPR2 nuclear reactors is set for the end of February.

The commissioning schedule for the new reactors will be established by a bill that will determine the speed of the procedures near the existing nuclear sites and the operation of the existing facilities, the statement said.

The bill is expected to reduce delays in administrative procedure and allow for progress on the construction sites.

The statement also announced plans for the construction of the first pilot of a small advanced nuclear reactor by the 2030s.

The extension of the plants will also require the launch of an examination of the issue of the fuel cycle, including the waste management, the statement said.

Several studies are set to be launched on the matter and presented at the next meeting of the nuclear council in June 2023, the statement said. The presentation of the studies is expected to be followed with a debate in Parliament on the development of energy and climate laws.

February 5, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | France, safety | Leave a comment

Cracking Under Pressure: Inside the Race to Fix France’s Nuclear Plants

Macron’s government wants to help EDF build six new large reactors and begin preparatory studies on another eight units by 2050.

But building 14 new reactors is “absolutely not within EDF’s reach with its current balance sheet,” said Celine Cherubin, a senior credit officer at Moody’s Investors Service………..

“The plan to fix seven safety cooling systems in 2023 is “not the end of the story,”… “It’s possible that we have to carry long and complex works. I think that 2023, ’24 and ’25 will continue to entail issues related to the stress corrosion.”

Yahoo News, Francois De Beaupuy, Sat, January 28, With assistance from Samuel Dodge and Patricia Suzara.

(Bloomberg) — Behind layers of security and a thick concrete wall, a team of welders work in shifts to fix the crippled Penly nuclear plant in northern France. Sweating under protective gear, they’re replacing cracked pipes in the emergency cooling system which protects against a reactor meltdown.

Each weld takes at least three days to complete, with workers often on their knees or backs to reach for the correct angle. Even in radiation suits, health regulations limit work in that environment to a maximum 40 hours a year.

The complicated procedures, replicated across sites this winter, have hampered the ability of Electricite de France SA to get its reactors back online after lengthy shutdowns.

Deadlines have slipped. The two Penly reactors were scheduled to be back online this month and next. Instead, EDF has been forced to delay the restarts to May and June.

“These are complex situations, in a noisy and radioactive environment,” Laurent Marquis, a manager at Altrad Group-Endel which is coordinating the repairs for EDF at Penly, said last month, before the restarts were pushed back. “Workers can sometimes only hold their position for just a few minutes before they need to be replaced.”

The power station, below a cliff on France’s northern coast, normally provides electricity for about 3.6 million households. Its two reactors have been, in effect, grounded by faulty plumbing — the same cracked pipes first discovered by EDF at another plant in late 2021. That reactor, at Civaux in central France, only came back online on Wednesday after extensive repairs.

The discoveries plunged the operator into a crisis with repercussions for all of Europe. EDF called it an “annus horribilis,” and from early May to late October, about half of its 56 reactors sat idle due to the repair and maintenance backlog.

It flipped France from Europe’s biggest electricity exporter into a net importer last year, just as the continent needed it more than ever. After gas imports from Russia dried up, energy prices soared, governments spent billions helping consumers with their bills and Europe was threatened with shortages and blackouts.

So far, Europe has avoided the worst-case scenario, thanks to efforts to conserve energy and a relatively mild winter that reduced heating demand

But the crisis is far from over, and EDF needs to find a way to avoid a repeat next winter. That challenge — finding problems, fixing them, doing checks — is already a mammoth task, and it’s being compounded by financial issues and staff shortages………………………………………………………….

By May, the utility had concluded that 16 of its reactors had pipes more prone to stress corrosion. Significantly, they were actually the group’s newest reactors, where the French nuclear plant builder Framatome — a unit of EDF — had modified the original Westinghouse Electric Co. design used for the 40 older units………………………………….

EDF has a history of missed maintenance deadlines, which an external audit published in June blamed on inadequate management of data, staff shortfalls and inexperienced teams in charge of turnarounds.

The company is still trying to figure out the speed at which cracks progress through pipes once they appear, meaning it faces tighter, more frequent monitoring of its reactors. Future setbacks can’t be ruled out.

The plan to fix seven safety cooling systems in 2023 is “not the end of the story,” Cedric Lewandowski, EDF’s senior executive vice-president for nuclear and thermal production, said at a parliamentary hearing this month. “It’s possible that we have to carry long and complex works. I think that 2023, ’24 and ’25 will continue to entail issues related to the stress corrosion.”

If that caps nuclear output, that means less power for France, and less to export to Europe.

Compounding the pipe issues is the broader maintenance work needed on what’s an aging fleet. Most of EDF’s reactors were built from the late 70s to the mid-90s, and now require longer down time. The utility wants to coincide the corrosion repairs with the other halts to maintain production, Lewandowski said.

On top of that, the utility is still repairing 122 faulty welds at a new flagship reactor in Flamanville in Normandy, which it wants to commission in the first half of 2024. The project is already over a decade behind schedule, and about €10 billion over budget.

All of which raises significant questions for EDF and the French government……………..

Macron’s government wants to help EDF build six new large reactors and begin preparatory studies on another eight units by 2050.

But building 14 new reactors is “absolutely not within EDF’s reach with its current balance sheet,” said Celine Cherubin, a senior credit officer at Moody’s Investors Service………………………..

The bigger question is whether EDF and the government can now reverse the sense of decline in France’s nuclear industry.

January 29, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | France, safety | Leave a comment

French nuclear safety needs review ahead of reactor lifespan extensions, newbuilds.

 https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/french-nuclear-safety-needs-review-ahead-reactor-lifespan-extensions-newbuilds-2023-01-23/ PARIS, Jan 23 (Reuters) – France’s nuclear safety needs a global and systemic review as President Emmanuel Macron’s government prepares to extend the lifespan of the existing fleet while planning to build new reactors, nuclear agency ASN said on Monday.

Bernard Doroszczuk, head of the French nuclear safety watchdog, also told a news conference that utility EDF (EDF.PA) must explain by end-2024 how it plans to extend the life of its nuclear plants up to or beyond 60 years, in order to formulate a first position on the issue within a further two years.

Doroszczuk said a nuclear safety review needs to anticipate the effects of ageing on nuclear installations as well as new challenges posed by climate change.

The government plans to present new energy and climate legislation this summer that will serve as the legislative framework for plans announced by Macron in February 2022 to start construction of at least six new EPR 2 nuclear reactors and to extend the lifespan of as many reactors as possible.

“We need to identify for which components there may be a limit to their operating lifespan,” Doroszczuk said, adding that some components, such as the reactor vessel and the reactor building, cannot be replaced while other components are hard to replace.

“This is not something that can be worked out on the back of an envelope, we cannot decide in a few months whether it is feasible to go beyond 60 years,” he said.

As well as better anticipating the long-term consequences of climate change on the current and future fleet, ASN also wants the new climate and energy law to tackle the issue of treatment and recycling of spent nuclar fuel.

During last year’s heatwave, the watchdog had to grant waivers in order to let certain reactors continue to operate – which had not happened since 2003.

The agency added that EDF unit Framatome had asked it to delay the replacement of the vessel cover of the EPR reactor under construction in Flamanville so it coincided with the first fuel reloading rather than replacing it at the end of 2024 as currently planned.

ASN said that the safety of French nuclear installations overall in 2022 was satisfactory, despite corrosion problems detected on some reactors.

January 24, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | France, safety | Leave a comment