French power heavily sold off as ASN conditionally approves seven reactor restarts

French nuclear authority ASN indicated during a press conference on Monday that controls on steam generators in seven French nuclear reactors could be completed by the end of the year.

Winter delivery products at the French wholesale power market were heavily sold down as a result, both before the press conference as participants priced in the likely return of the reactors to service, and afterwards as the confirmed news spread.

ASN considers that the restart of the concerned reactors is possible and has accepted a generic safety case submitted by EDF on 15 November.

Verification of each individual reactor is still needed however, the nuclear watchdog said.

A total capacity of 6.9GW is scheduled to return to the grid at the end of the year provided ASN gives the authorisation to restart.

An additional four reactors, with a combined capacity of 4.2GW, are to go offline between 10 and 24 December and return between 3 and 15 January, according to RTE transparency data.

ASN has accepted the safety case for the 900MW reactors in question, but is expecting further information on two 1,495MW reactors at the Civaux power plant.

ASN is yet to take a position on an request by EDF to spread out the remaining four outages, it was also revealed at the press conference.

Prices on the over-the-counter wholesale market were sharply down both before and immediately after the press conference on Monday.

Shortly after the conference, the January ’17 Baseload contract was last seen trading on the over-the-counter market at €64.00/MWh on Monday afternoon, down €16.50/MWh compared to the previous close and down by €39.50/MWh since the previous Wednesday, ICIS data showed.

Having peaked at €136.00/MWh on 18 November, the fall in a little over two weeks has been a huge 53%.

Losses were also significant on the Cal ’17 Baseload contract, which traded as low as €36.00/MWh on Monday afternoon before rebounding slightly. The contract reached its highest assessment on 3 November, at €49.40/MWh, and was still priced over €49.00/MWh on 22 November and over €46.00/MWh on Wednesday of last week.

In addition to the eleven reactors investigated for high carbon content, four nuclear reactors will be offline for the entire winter period.

French nuclear availability stood at 50.9GW on Monday morning. joachim.moxon@icis.com