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Actually France nuclear industry is harmed by the current chilliness of the EU, lead by germany, toward nuclear power generation. If EDF could choose, they woul

Actually France nuclear industry is harmed by the current chilliness of the EU, lead by germany, toward nuclear power generation. If EDF could choose, they would prefer a bigger market to export its technology inside the EU. The problem of capacity factors of french nuclear reactors is caused by excess generation by renewables (mostly wind from north sea) that cannot be stopped and is sold at quasi negative rates. It's clear when you see the capacity factor has been decreasing for the last decades without much change in the number of reactors online in France.

Retric 6y ago
Capacity factors have been improving in France as they scale back nuclear production from 87.9% nuclear and 13.9% mostly hydro renewables in 2004 vs to 71.7% nuclear and 21.3% renewables in 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France#International_exchanges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France#I... Looking at 2004 they used 8,204 kWh/Hab but produced 9,203, and thus needed to export an even larger fraction before wind/solar took off. PS: The graph makes it clear why things are improving, their simply cutting back on nuclear. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/FR_ELEC_PROD.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/FR_ELEC_...