Late in 2016 France began shutting nuclear plants down for inspection, and depending on which source one consults either 12, 18 or 20 of France’s 58 nuclear plants were off-line at one point. Since France has historically been a nuclear power exporter this raised fears of possible power shortages and blackouts in France and its neighbors during the coming winter. Well, the worst of the winter is now past and there have been no power shortages or blackouts. To some extent this is because there were no unusually cold spells, but unusually cold spells do not happen all that often, and there is no certainty that power shortages would have occurred had there been any. The conclusion is therefore that the French “nuclear crisis” was perhaps not as critical as some feared it might be.
This post is partly an update on my earlier post on this subject, which presented data only up to the middle of November 2016. It also supplements Euan Mearn’s recent post UK Grid January and the perfect storm, but with a European emphasis and without, I believe, changing any of Euan’s conclusions regarding the situation in UK. The data used are the 15 minute readings from Leo Smith’s Gridwatch France site supplemented where necessary by other sources.
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