Lobbyists debate responses to the nuclear power crisis

On March 8, shares in EDF hit an all-time lowa day after the €4bn capital raising was launched; the stock price fell to €7.78, less than one-tenth of the €86.45 high a decade ago.

Costs of between €50bn and €100bn will need to be spent by 2030 to meet new safety requirements for reactors in France and to extend their operating lives beyond 40 years.

EDF has set aside €23bn to cover reactor decommissioning and waste management costs in France ‒ less than half of the €54bn that EDF estimates will be required. A recent report by the French National Assembly's Commission for Sustainable Development and Regional Development concluded that there is "obvious under-provisioning" and that decommissioning and waste management will likely take longer, be more challenging and cost much more than EDF anticipates.

In 2015, concerns about the integrity of some EPR pressure vessels were revealed, prompting investigations that are still ongoing. Last year, the scandal was magnified when the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) announced that Areva had informed it of "irregularities in components produced at its Creusot Forge plant." The problems concern documents attesting to the quality of parts manufactured at the site. At least 400 of the 10,000 quality documents reviewed by Areva contained anomalies.

EDF is being forced to take over parts of its struggling sibling Areva's operations - a fate you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. And just when it seemed that things couldn't get any worse for EDF, a fire took hold in the turbine room of one of the Flamanville reactors on February 9 and the reactor will likely be offline until late March at an estimated cost of roughly €1.2m per day.

Half of the world's nuclear industry is in crisis and/or shutting down

No-one would dispute that Japan's nuclear power industry is in crisis, with no end in sight. Six years after the Fukushima disaster, only three reactors are operating in Japan; before the disaster, the number topped 50.

A February 2017 EnergyPostWeekly article says "the EU, the US and Japan are busy committing nuclear suicide."

Combined, the crisis-ridden US, French and Japanese nuclear industries account for 45% of the world's 'operable' nuclear reactors according to the World Nuclear Association's database, and they accounted for 50% of nuclear power generation in 2015 (and 57% in 2010).

Countries with crisis-ridden nuclear programs or phase-out policies (e.g. Germany, Belgium, and Taiwan) account for about half of the world's operable reactors and more than half of worldwide nuclear power generation.

The Era of Nuclear Decommissioning (END)

The ageing of the global reactor fleet isn't yet a crisis for the industry, but it is heading that way. The assessment by the 'Environmental Progress' lobby group that 151 GW of worldwide nuclear power capacity could be shut down by 2030 is consistent with figures from the World Nuclear Association (132 reactor shut-downs by 2035), the International Energy Agency (almost 200 shut-downs between 2014 and 2040) and Nuclear Energy Insider (up to 200 shut-downs in the next two decades).