[leonidasrup]

The bad financial shape of EDF had multiple reasons:

1. Cost overruns in construction of the new EPR reactors. The EPR is a extremely safe and as a result extremely overengineered and expensive design. The aim was to merge the French N4 design and German Konvoi design and have a standard design which would satisfy nuclear regulators in all countries. France wants now to simplify EPR and build cheaper and simpler EPR2.

2. EDF was mandated to sell large part of it's electricity production at bellow the market value. The ARENH mechanism.

"The ARENH (which in French means “regulated access to historic nuclear energy”) was created in 2011 in the context of the opening of the electricity market to competition. The law that provided a framework for this opening-up had the main objective of enabling all consumers to benefit from the competitiveness of the French nuclear fleet. Before the ARENH, EDF was the main electricity supplier, covering 95% of the French territory (the rest being covered by local distribution companies). Under the ARENH, so-called alternative suppliers (i.e. other than EDF) obtained access to a regulated price (€42/MWh) for the electricity produced by EDF’s historic nuclear fleet within a volume limit of 100 TWh per year. This is equivalent to almost a third (27.64%) of 2024 French nuclear production (361.7 TWh)."

https://hayaenergy.com/blog-end-of-french-nuclear-procuremen...