EDF electricity is 80% nuclear so fixed initial cost. When Europe pushed for opening the electricity market to private actors France reacted by forcing EDF to

EDF electricity is 80% nuclear so fixed initial cost. When Europe pushed for opening the electricity market to private actors France reacted by forcing EDF to sell some amount of GWh of its nuclear electricity to third party at a price fixed by law, called "ARENH" (1). Now the french nuclear industry was put between a rock and a hard place. It has said for a long time that nuclear was ultra ultra cheap and unbeatable and ultra reliable so it could not really ask for a high price relative to historical prices. So we ended up with 42 EUR/MWh nuclear electricity price (which was the minimum price asked by EDF at the time) fixed by law for electricity provided by nuclear. Some years other sources were cheaper (most recent years BTW), some years nuclear was cheaper. Main issue this year is that french nuclear plants have potential safety issues plus various other issue and less than 50% capacity factor (bye bye nuclear = reliable baseload idea BTW) and other sources other than renewable have high price while EDF still has to provide amount of MWh at the now very low relative to market prices ARENH price to competitors. (1) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/March%C3%A9_de_l%27%C3%A9lectricit%C3%A9_en_France https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/March%C3%A9_de_l%27%C3%A9lectr...