Heat shuts down French nuke plants: Who keeps lights on?

The current heat wave is putting a strain on UK energy supplies, in part because France has had to reduce its nuclear power output, requiring it to import more of its electricity from Britain.

As reported in the Times Online, EDF has been forced to slow down many of its inland nuclear plants in France as warmer river temperatures have made it more difficult to provide adequate cooling for reactors. As a result, France has had to import as much as 1,000 megawatts of electricity from the UK at peak times to meet its own demand.

According to IT vendor F5 Networks, such circumstances are “only a taste of  things to come, as temperatures continue to surge, and the global threat of climate change continues to hang over businesses.”

“The UK is keeping France running as a third of its nuclear power stations are switched off, there is already a debate around whether the UK faces a real electricity shortage in the near future,” said Owen Cole, technical director for UK&I at F5 Networks.

“Given that there is credible, independent research to suggest there is a real threat, enterprises have no choice but to incorporate this scenario into their business continuity and disaster recovery planning,” Cole said. “They cannot assume consistency of power supply. Strategic planning should incorporate a two-fold approach — working out firstly how to conserve energy, and secondly how to use energy more efficiently without affecting the business.”

He added, “Modern data centres can use the equivalent energy to small towns. Given the huge amount of power involved, heat efficient resources must be considered to allow power conservation, so if electricity supply is cut, backup generators can use this excess energy to help ensure critical operations are running. On the usage side, imperatives include reviewing options around the dynamic provisioning and de-provisioning of equipment on a per-need basis, thereby using only necessary power.

“On the national policy level, if we don’t make plans to cope with the possible restricted supply of energy, we face becoming more reliant on other countries — we might have to buy in our supply. This sort of loss of control over energy policy isn’t a favourable scenario. If the UK is helping other countries already, who’s going to be left to leave our lights on?”