London, 20 May (Argus) — France should prepare itself for the possible simultaneous closure of multiple nuclear units for safety reasons over the coming decades, according to nuclear watchdog ASN.
The country should take action in the short term to ensure there is sufficient power generation capacity if one or more of its ageing nuclear units has to close in the medium term, ASN president Pierre-Franck Chevet said.
The ageing of non-replaceable nuclear components will eventually necessitate the closure of all 58 of the country's nuclear units. The majority of these were first connected in the 1980s and were intended to operate until the 2020s. The narrow timeframe for the original connections and the standardised technology used could lead to several of the plants reaching the end of their lifetime within a relatively short period.
If these closures are not sufficiently anticipated, the balance between supply and demand could be threatened, Chevet warns. Decisive action in the short term is needed, as the time between an investment decision to build a new plant and that plant's connection to the grid can be up to a decade, and government policy with regard to the generation mix can take several years to come into effect.
Although inspections on France's nuclear units have not necessitated their permanent closure, the possibility of extending their lives beyond the 40 years originally intended cannot be guaranteed, Chevet added.
The ASN focuses on closures only when ageing units are no longer deemed to comply with the safety standards, rather than with the government's plan to reduce the role of nuclear in the French generation mix to 50pc by 2025, from 75pc now.
As the law stands, only ASN has the authority to determine whether an ageing unit must be closed for safety reasons. But the government plans to change the law allow closures for policy reasons.
The first unit to be closed as part of the ruling socialist party's nuclear reduction plan will be the 1.8GW Fessenheim plant, one of the oldest in France. President Francois Hollande has committed to shutting the plant permanently before the end of 2016, in response environmentalists' concerns about its safety. But the ASN considers Fessenheim to be as safe as a new nuclear plant, and recently extended the life of both of its units by 10 years, until 2021 and 2023.
The future role of nuclear power in France is a key topic of the national energy debate. The government plans to use the debate to hammer out details of an energy legislation package centering on reducing nuclear power's role, and aims to introduce a draft energy bill to the national assembly in the autumn.
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