Currently, 17 of France’s 56 nuclear power plants are not supplying electricity. Perhaps not as base-load capable as propagated?
Currently, 17 of France’s 56 nuclear power plants are not supplying electricity. Perhaps not as base-load capable as propagated?
9 comments
Anyone know why they are shut down?
Is it common for so many to be off at the same time (kinda hard to believe), and if not then what’s the reason why there’s so many off now?
[https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE](https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE)
We currently import 411MW from France, 1.01 GW from Netherlands, 71MW from Denmark(West) and 53MW from Norway
We export 600MW to Luxembourg, 708MW to Belgium, 2.09 GW to Switzerland, 1.09 to Austria, 91MW to Czech, 1.26GW to Poland, 950MW to Denmark (East) and 75MW to Sweden.
And what effects is France experiencing because of this? Is the French civilization on the brink of collapse? I think we would have heard by now if it was the case.
Option 1: there is enough load to match demand therefore 17 offline for maintenance etc isn’t an issue.
Option 2: there is not enough supply to match the load, therefore more should be built to maintain a base load.
Either way, nuclear is the way forward.
I love nuclear energy, way to go! Europe will need hundreds more though.
Is France still able to export energy to virtually all its neighbours despite this?
The issue with our nuclear plants is that they are too old, so require a lot of maintenance. We need new, efficient ones.
Well, the fact that plants built 50 years ago are still a rather reliable source of electricity is probably a sign that it is a good source of energy. Imagine the progress in renewables in 50 years. Imagine if we could, today, build eolian or solar plants that would last for 50 years without the need for replacement.
It’s 56 reactors, not plants. France has 18 plants.
You need to check how nuclear reactor works. Being baseload capable does not mean they need to always be ON, and it is unthinkable any industrial equipment is not off for maintenance (and frequently).
In fact the cycles for nuclear reactors and solid state (like coal) boilers kind of have similar timelines. They need to be turned off (to remove ashes and inefficiencies in the case of boilers, to renew fuel in the case of nuclear reactors) every few months. You can not have ALL your capacity on and at the same schedule, becuase you need to space, some off so they can be turned on when others come off.