French Nuclear Power Crisis Frustrates Europe’s Push to Quit Russian Energy

PARIS — Plumes of steam towered above two reactors recently at the Chinon nuclear power plant in the heart of France’s verdant Loire Valley. But the skies above a third reactor there were unusually clear — its operations frozen after the worrisome discovery of cracks in the cooling system.

The partial shutdown isn’t unique: Around half of France’s atomic fleet, the largest in Europe, has been taken offline as a storm of unexpected problems swirls around the nation’s state-backed nuclear power operator, Électricité de France, or EDF.

As the European Union moves to cut ties to Russian oil and gas in the wake of Moscow’s war on Ukraine, France has been betting on its nuclear plants to weather a looming energy crunch. Nuclear power provides about 70 percent of France’s electricity, a bigger share than any other country in the world.

But the industry has tumbled into an unprecedented power crisis as EDF confronts troubles ranging from the mysterious emergence of stress corrosion inside nuclear plants to a hotter climate that is making it harder to cool the aging reactors.

The outages at EDF, Europe’s biggest electricity exporter, have sent France’s nuclear power output tumbling to its lowest level in nearly 30 years, pushing French electric bills to record highs just as the war in Ukraine is stoking broader inflation. Instead of pumping vast amounts of electricity to Britain, Italy and other European countries pivoting from Russian oil, France faces the unsettling prospect of initiating rolling blackouts this winter and having to import power.

EDF, already 43 billion euros (about $45 billion) in debt, is also exposed to a recent deal involving the Russian state-backed nuclear power operator, Rosatom, that may heap fresh financial pain on the French company. The troubles have ballooned so quickly that President Emmanuel Macron’s government has hinted that EDF may need to be nationalized.

“We can’t rule it out,” Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the minister for energy transition, said Tuesday. “We are going to need massive investments in EDF.”

The crunch could not have hit at a worse time. Oil prices touched record highs after the European Union agreed to cut off Russian oil, intensifying economic pain in Europe and adding to a cost-of-living crisis that France and other countries are scrambling to address. The price of natural gas, which France uses to make up for fluctuations in nuclear-powered energy, has also surged.

As Russian aggression redefines Europe’s energy considerations, nuclear energy’s advocates say it can help bridge Europe’s fuel deficit, complementing a shift that was already underway to adapt wind, solar and other renewable energy to meet ambitious climate-change targets.

But fixing the crisis at EDF won’t be easy.

With 56 reactors, France’s atomic fleet is the biggest after the United States’. A quarter of Europe’s electricity comes from nuclear power in about a dozen countries, with France producing more than half the total.

But the French nuclear industry, mostly built in the 1980s, has been plagued for decades by a lack of fresh investment. Experts say it has lost valuable engineering expertise…