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by robmsmt 1354 days ago
Thanks for the link, what are your thoughts on the position that France is in with a number of reactors out of action and requiring repairs? From an outsiders perspective, I am curious if it is really as simple as the French not keeping up with maintenance and it catching them at a bad time or are there issues with the reactor type or other influencing factors.
1 comments

They're experiencing the flip side of the argument of picking one standard reactor and building lots of them identically. If an issue is identified, it can affect your whole fleet. In this case, they were doing an inspection and found unexpected corrosion in a safety system. They checked another similar reactor and found it too. The more they started checking the more they found. So they have to go down for extended outages and repairs, as necessary. This is very bad timing, considering the gas-driven energy crunch.

The repairs can be done, and the reactors will come back online, it just takes time. Very unfortunate, to say the least.

Kind of like those Takata airbag recalls, I suppose.