Heat and drought are putting pressure on Europe's nuclear power

 

Agneta Liljeqvist/TT

 

Published 06.15Updated 08.59

          

        The Cattenom nuclear power plant in eastern France was forced to shut down this weekend due to              low water levels in the Moselle River. The picture is from 2022. Photo: Jean-Francois Badias/AP/TT

Extreme heat and dried-up rivers in Europe are forcing several countries to close nuclear reactors and reduce electricity production.

Nuclear power plants are not built for this heat, according to an expert.

In Hungary, the government went out last week and asked industries in the country to reduce electricity consumption. The reason is that the country's only nuclear power plant, Paks, south of Budapest, is at risk of being closed due to record low water levels in the Danube River.

Neighboring Romania has taken drastic measures. On Monday, part of a canal was blown up to divert water to avoid the closure of the Cernavoda nuclear power plant.

More outages

In France, too, the summer heatwaves have put pressure on the country’s nuclear power. This weekend, state-owned EDF shut down several reactors due to drought in two rivers. And the Golfech nuclear power plant in the southwest of the country has been forced to shut down several times because the temperature in the Garonne River has been too high. Since 2006, it has been prohibited – in order to protect aquatic environments – to release cooling water into rivers when the temperature exceeds 28 degrees. In July, a reactor in Golfech was shut down for more than two weeks, the longest shutdown on record.

According to the Cour des Comptes (the French equivalent of the National Audit Office), outages could triple to quadruple by 2050 as a result of the recurring heatwaves.

Christophe Demazière, an expert on reactor safety, notes that nuclear power plants are not adapted to this type of extreme heat.

“When these reactors were built in the 1970s and 1980s, they did not think that temperatures would be this high during the summer months,” says Demazière, who is a professor of nuclear reactor physics at Chalmers.

Technical solutions

France produces almost 70 percent of its electricity with nuclear power and is one of Europe’s largest electricity exporters. The power plants are located along rivers or by the sea because they depend on large amounts of cooling water. But as temperatures rise and water levels drop, the power plants must find other solutions.

Demazière believes that there are technical solutions that do not require water, but that requires investment. And when new power plants are built, these can be adapted to the heat. In the United States, the world’s largest producer of nuclear power, the authorities approved the construction of a nuclear reactor that is cooled with sodium instead of water this spring.

However, the summer reactor shutdown has not led to any electricity shortage in France. On the contrary, the country has been able to continue exporting electricity to Germany, among others.

“The need for electricity is lower during the summer, so reducing electricity production has still meant that more is produced than is needed,” says Demazière.

Correction: An earlier version of the text contained incorrect information about Poland, which has no nuclear power plants in operation.