Re:European natural gas imports and storage reserves
by phicoh on Tuesday September 13, 2022 @09:56AM
(#32824333)
This summer, France has been importing significant amounts of electricity from countries that burn gas or coal. You don't do that if you have plenty of nuclear power available.
Re:European natural gas imports and storage reserves
by kennend3 on Tuesday September 13, 2022 @11:10AM
(#32825319)
Re-read what i wrote.. if you know that water levels will be low and you purposely idle your reactors annually.. then you do import power.
It looks like this is NOT a new problem (from 2016) https://www.economist.com/business/2016/12/01/frances-nuclea...
- Reactors are seasonally idle and will ramp back up for winter - During this normally idle time, they do maintenance
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/minister-fren...
Perhaps this idea that "half of France's reactors are idle" is partly true, partly scare tactics from the "anti-nuke" group?
Nuclear reactors require vast amounts of cooling water so timing your "down time" to coincide with low water levels does make sense.
Here(Ontario) we build them on the shores of Lake Ontario and the intake pipe extends far into the lake to avoid any sort of water level fluctuations impacting power production.