The industrial action may “have an impact on the schedule for the return to production of certain reactors,” a group spokeswoman told AFP. “For reactors in production, this may result in temporary power reductions,” she added.
EDF has thus updated on its website the restart date of several reactors, without however saying to what extent these delays were related to the labor movement: Cattenom 1, Cruas 2 and 3, Saint-Alban 2 and Tricastin 3.
These delays range from one day to nearly three weeks depending on the reactor.
The social movement seems to be spreading slowly but surely. EDF identified social movements on six sites on Friday, but the CGT counted nine on Saturday morning (Belleville, Bugey, Cattenom, Cruas, Dampierre,
Gravelines, Paluel, Saint-Alban and Tricastin). In each of these plants, the union has identified blockages in the work scheduled on one or more reactors, as well as occasional power cuts.
This movement aims to put pressure on the wage negotiations of companies in the energy sector and particularly EDF, where a first meeting is scheduled for Tuesday.
If this strike has no impact at this stage for the general public and weighs mainly on the finances of EDF, it could “impact the schedule” of availability of nuclear units on the network, most of the power plants on strike are subject to maintenance operations, indicated Friday to AFP Claude Martin, FNME-CGT.
“We are now at 30 reactors out of 56 that are working, we will pass in the coming weeks about 40, the goal is to pass to 45 in January,” had said President Emmanuel Macron in a television interview on Wednesday. “This objective, everything indicates that we will keep it,” he said.
As winter approaches, France is weakened by low nuclear power production due to work or corrosion problems on some of its nuclear reactors. And it can hardly count on its hydroelectric production, which has been reduced due to the drought.
The network manager RTE had judged in September the risk of tension on the electrical network this winter “increased” but “controllable thanks to a strong mobilization” in favor of energy savings.
