French Nuclear Plants Have Problems

French electricity imports rise as cold spell dampens nuclear outputLondon (Platts)--26Nov2013/811 am EST/1311 GMT French net power imports slumped early Tuesday after EDF suffered an unplanned outage at its 900 MW Fessenheim 2 nuclear power reactor and demand rose on colder weather, the latest data from grid operator RTE showed.

The Fessenheim 2 reactor was taken off the grid at 04:00 local time Tuesday (0300 GMT), and no restart date was given.

The outage follows capacity limitations at several other EDF reactors, including the 900 MW Chinon 1 and Gravelines 2 reactors.

Lower temperatures increased French power demand by 2.3 GW on the day to 75.0 GW at 08:45 Tuesday and national power imports climbed from 500 MW Monday to almost 3 GW Tuesday

 

 

2013-12-14 And still the French purchase our power:

And its not just during peak demand. There seems to be something amiss with the French grid. The interconnector power must be more expensive then home grown electricity. So why do they not bring their reserves on line??
Back to normal?

The Interconnector is now fixed and UK is again buying 2GW from the French!

The wind generation is now at least 6GW (windy!) and possibly as high as 9GW (some generation is not recorded on grid (used locally)

http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

So UK was supplying up to 2GW to the French power grid. Another example of a complex system working.
However it is surprising that the French do not increase the output of their cheap(???) nuclear stations instead of buying from the UK. Perhaps they are having real problems with their system?