By Forrest Crellin and Caroline Pailliez
PARIS (Reuters) – Workers at EDF’s Bugey nuclear plant in eastern France resumed their strike over wage demands on Thursday, electricity trade union FNME said, further delaying maintenance and fuel reloading.
Members of FNME have been staging rolling strikes on and off at French nuclear power plants for several weeks, heightening the risk of power supply shortages as the French utility is struggling to get enough reactors back online for winter.
France will be short between 5 to 15 gigawatts (GW) of power at peak demand this winter depending on the temperature and will need to mainly rely on imports, according to forecast models developed by EDF’s works council CSE.
Virginie Neumayer, representative of trade union FNME, said that as strike action stops fuel reloading that will delay the return of the Bugey reactor to the network, although other maintenance can still be carried out.
EDF could not be immediately reached for comment.
France will have to buy electricity on the market this winter or produce it from gas, and there is no guarantee that neighboring countries will be in a position to sell their electricity, CSE representative Philippe Page le Merour said, given the energy crisis in Europe.
“If we have a normally cold or very cold winter, the situation will not be able to happen without massive load shedding, and the load shedding (contracts) will not be enough,” Page le Merour said.
Grid operator RTE holds contracts with companies that will allow them to cut electricity quickly in case of a supply-demand imbalance in exchange for compensation.
“It would almost take a warm winter to not see any consequences on the electricity network,” Page le Merour added.
However, the current EDF maintenance schedule is seen as on track, so unless there is an industrial hazard, there should be sufficient supply but it will be tight, he said.
The Gravelines 1 reactor in northern France has also cut its power output due to the strike by 360 megawatts (MW) to 550 MW following the call for a strike at the plant made on Wednesday, data from operator EDF showed.
The French government has requested TotalEnergies to raise wages as a standoff between the oil major and striking workers which has hit the country’s petrol supplies dragged on for a 16th day.
(Reporting by Forrest Crellin and Caroline Pailliez; Editing by Jan Harvey, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Susan Fenton)
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