Twenty French nuclear reactors affected by strike, union says

STRIKES have affected work at nearly a third of France’s nuclear reactors, an FNME-CGT power union representative said on Wednesday (Oct 19), delaying maintenance at many of them ahead of planned talks with operator EDF.

Three of the reactors lowered production by a total of 1.8 gigawatts (GW) by 0837 GMT, EDF data showed.

France’s nuclear output was already expected to hit a 30-year low in 2022 because of a record number of reactor outages due to corrosion issues and planned maintenance, at a time when Europe is facing an energy crisis triggered by the Ukraine war.

Power supply has been further hit in recent weeks as the FNME-CGT union has been staging rolling strikes over wages at some nuclear power plants.

FNME-CGT representative Virginie Neumayer told Reuters 20 reactors out of a total of 56 had been affected by the strikes. Of those, 17 reactors had their maintenance schedule delayed.

The start of planned maintenance at the Gravelines 4 and Dampierre 3 sites have been pushed back due to the strikes, and now show their outage start date on Oct 19. This has moved the restart of the Dampierre 3 site by one day to Nov 27.

Power grid operator RTE warned on Tuesday that prolonged strikes delaying even further the restart of the reactors could have “heavy consequences” for electricity supply over the winter. REUTERS