My article in Le Monde: "Nuclear plants shut down: the scenario combining a prolonged heatwave, overheated water and falling river flows is straining France's fleet"
I published an op-ed in Le Monde, in the Ideas section: “Nuclear plants shut down: the scenario combining a prolonged heatwave, overheated water and falling river flows is straining France’s fleet”.
This summer, several French reactors — both units at Chooz, in the Ardennes, and one unit at Cattenom, in Moselle — had to be shut down for lack of sufficient flow in the Meuse and Moselle rivers, while other European plants faced the same fate (Cernavoda in Romania, Paks in Hungary). I show that the annual average of environment-related production losses, the figure EDF highlights, hides what matters most: these losses concentrate exactly when cooling demand rises and neighbouring countries face the same hydrological constraint, making cross-border backup impossible.
I argue that the simplified revision of France’s multiannual energy programming, which can be launched from 2027, should include a hydrological stress test based on a 2035 low-flow scenario rather than the average hydrology of the past thirty years — and that this constraint should apply to new production capacity as well as to future data centres.