Two nuclear power plants were stopped Dec. 16 by French authorities, after routine maintenance found a fault in one of them. That is enough to not only turn into a speculator’s opportunity, which it did, causing a surge in European power prices that day. But, since France is an exporter of electricity, watch out for blackouts, if—who could have imagined?—temperatures turn cold in winter.
The two plants down are on top of two other ones, which altogether account for 13 % of the current power availability in France. No timetable to restart the plants was immediately publicized.
