PARIS (Reuters) – France’s EDF has raised its nuclear production forecasts for 2025 and beyond, after a strong rebound in output in 2024 and its new Flamanville 3 reactor came online.
The state-owned power giant lifted its production forecast late on Thursday to between 350 and 370 terawatt-hours (TWh), up from the 335-365 TWh previously expected for 2025 and 2026.
WHY IT IS IMPORTANT
EDF has faced challenges in recent years with its maintenance schedule, but this winter has been marked with strong nuclear production that helped French baseload power contracts trade lower than their German counterparts.
CONTEXT
EDF’s management has stated a goal of getting to 400 TWh of nuclear production which makes this a rather conservative forecast, said Nicolas Goldberg at Colombus Consulting.
Europe is still grappling with a lack of power demand from large industry after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 caused power prices to spiral and hit European economies.
KEY QUOTE
“We could have expected nuclear production to continue rising,” Goldberg said.
“What I understand here is that there is still a significant backlog of work to be carried out on the nuclear fleet, which leads to these conservative forecasts,” he added.
BY THE NUMBERS
EDF’s 2024 production was revised higher during the previous year and finished at 361.7 TWh, 12.9% higher than the 320.4 TWh produced in 2023 as the company rebounded from the stress corrosion issues that took a chunk of the fleet offline in 2022.
GRAPHIC
(Reporting by Forrest Crellin; Editing by Alexander Smith)
