London (Platts)--27Sep2012/710 am EDT/1110 GMT

France's national short-term nuclear power outlook dropped Thursday, after nuclear operator EDF delayed scheduled restarts of several reactors, data from grid operator RTE showed.

Within-day data Thursday showed output from expensive-to-run fuel oil-fired power plants soared and national exports fell on lower production from coal and gas plants.

The bulk of France's power comes from state-controlled EDF's nuclear plants and the national nuclear outlook for Friday slumped by 1 GW on the day to 45.9 GW while the forecast for Saturday fell by 2.4 GW to 42.2 GW. Monday's outlook was lowered by 1.9 GW to 43.3 GW.

Since Wednesday's forecast, EDF has delayed by over two weeks the restart date of its 900 MW Blayais 1 reactor, from Saturday to October 15. This followed a notification by the company Wednesday afternoon that the 1.3 GW Nogent sur Seine reactor would not return Thursday, and is now expected to return to the grid Tuesday.

EDF expects its 915 MW Tricastin 1 reactor to return to the grid Thursday; the unit was not back online by 09:45.

Tricastin 1 suffered an unplanned outage earlier this week while the plant was being restarted.

FUEL OIL PLANTS FILL THE GAS GAP

Actual French power consumption fell by 550 MW on the day to 55.1 GW at 09:45 Thursday, but with no additions to nuclear output, and production from coal-fired plants falling by 1.7 GW to 2.3 GW, output from fuel oil plants rose by 1.0 GW to 1.2 GW.

One important factor which has put pressure on fuel oil plants has been the lack of output from gas-fired plants. Gas-fired generation has dropped due to the higher margins available from switching to coal-fired plants and French gas-fired generation slumped to zero Thursday.

One power trader confirmed Wednesday his firm's European gas-fired assets were "far out of the money so they can't run."

The surge in fuel oil-fired generation failed to stop French net power exports from slumping 1.8 GW on the day to 3.9 GW.

--Robin Sayles, newsdesk@platts.com
--Edited by Jonathan Fox, jonathan_fox@platts.com

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