France’s nuclear power generation hit a 34-year low of 18.1 TWh in August – which continued through September – amid maintenance and corrosion issues, preliminary data from TSO RTE showed on Tuesday. With only 44% of installed capacity available last month, the figure was a 38% drop in output from the 29 TWh produced in September 2021. Nuclear supply amounted to 209.5 TWh for the first nine months of 2022, down 22% from the same period in 2021. Maintenance delays due to the Covid-19 pandemic and stress corrosion issues at several reactors led EDF to revise down its nuclear output target to the lowest point in over 30 years of 280-300 TWh this year, compared with 361.7 TWh last year. With nuclear plants covering only 58% of the 31.2 TWh power consumption last month, France’s gas-fired plants generated 3 TWh – compared with 0.7 TWh a year ago – and it imported 3.4 TWh of power from neighbouring countries.
The country has been a net power importer every month since November 2021, aside from February and May. It has imported 12.9 TWh net since the beginning of the year, whereas it had exported 46.7 TWh net during the same period last year. France was forecast in August by Montel’s Energy Quantified (EQ) analyst Eylert Ellefsen to become a net electricity importer for the whole year for the first time in more than 20 years. The most imports last month came from Germany (2.5 TWh), Spain (1.8 TWh) and the UK (1.5 TWh), while France exported 1.6 TWh to Italy and 0.7 TWh to Switzerland, RTE’s preliminary data showed. Meanwhile, hydropower dropped 26% year on year to 2.5 TWh amid continued drought in France. Solar and wind plants covered just under 13% of the demand (1.7 TWh of solar and 2.3 TWh of wind).