On this Saturday, the French Chooz nuclear power plant will be completely taken off the grid for just under five weeks.

On Thursday, the state operator EDF pulled the plug on one of the two blocks that stand on the border with Belgium and, with 1450 megawatts each, are among the four most powerful reactors in France.

The country has a total of 56 reactors with a total output of 61,370 megawatts.

They cover around 70 percent of French electricity consumption.

Niklas Záboji

Business correspondent in Paris

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The reason for the shutdown are technical errors in the vicinity of welds in the Civaux nuclear power plant in the west of the country.

They were discovered during an inspection - first in the first reactor, which had been shut down since August, and then also in the second reactor, which was decommissioned in November.

The components in both plants are now to be replaced, EDF announced this week - which will extend the standstill of the two reactors, each with an output of 1,450 megawatts, until the end of March and the end of April.

Originally, at least Civaux 2 should go back online next week.

"Increased Vigilance"

That’s not enough. Because similar problems could arise in the similar type of pressurized water reactors from Chooz, EDF decided to shut them down and check them as a “precautionary measure”. The bottom line is an unplanned outage of almost 6000 megawatts of power. And that makes you sit up and take notice in three ways: On the one hand, because it highlights the nuclear energy, which French President Emmanuel Macron has praised as reliable, and which he wants to expand vigorously.

In addition, there is the inconvenient time: it was only at the end of November that the French electricity network operator RTE called for “increased vigilance” with regard to security of supply this winter.

The pandemic continues to affect maintenance plans.

RTE sees a particular risk in January and February.

Finally, thirdly, at the end of this year three more German nuclear power plants with a total of around 4,000 megawatts of power will be taken off the grid, in addition to the coal phase-out.

The Federal Network Agency appeased.

“The amount of electricity imported from France could decrease slightly.

We are not assuming any significant effects for Germany, "said a spokesman for the FAZ. The West German network operator Amprion also affirmed:" Due to the situation in France, there is currently no tense supply situation. "

Amprion refers to the prognosis of the European network operator association ENTSO-E, according to which “overall no risks for the security of electrical supply are to be expected this winter”.

However, the electricity exchange recorded price jumps this week, also in Germany.

Since EDF now has to procure expensive replacement quantities on the market, the group reduced its earnings forecast slightly.

The EDF share then fell significantly in value.