German nuclear output at 2014 low with three reactors offline
London (Platts)--16May2014/919 am EDT/1319 GMT
German nuclear availability will drop below 8 GW for the first time
this year as three reactors will be offline for annual maintenance from
Saturday, plant operators' transparency data showed Friday.
RWE's 1.4 GW Emsland reactor was ramping down Friday for a three-week
annual maintenance and refueling outage, scheduled to last until June 4,
it said.
E.ON's 1.3 GW Grafenrheinfeld reactor is scheduled to come offline
Saturday for its final annual refueling outage before decommissioning
next year, REMIT data from E.ON showed.
E.ON's 1.4 GW Grohnde reactor will remain offline until June 20 for an
extended maintenance outages, which also uncovered a problem with the
plant's generator.
Meanwhile, the 1.3 GW Gundremmingen B reactor returned to the grid early
Friday, three days earlier than originally planned, according to RWE's
transparency website.
Nuclear output was further reduced by capacity cuts at E.ON's Isar 2
reactor due to a transformer problem.
Overall, German nuclear availability will drop to 7.3 GW Sunday,
according to EEX transparency data, giving it an availability factor of
61%.
By contrast, French nuclear availability was pegged at 47 GW for week
21, according to RTE data, representing an availability factor of around
76%.
Germany's nuclear fleet has nine reactors remaining after the government
decided in 2011 to close eight older reactors in the wake of the
Fukushima nuclear accident.
Germany plans to fully phase out nuclear power generation by 2023 with
the second nuclear exit timetable starting next year with the planned
decommissioning of the Grafenrheinfeld reactor, with two more reactors
set for decommissioning by the end of 2017 and 2019, respectively.
The remaining six reactors are set to lose their operating licences
either at the end of 2021 or 2022, which would would remove almost 8,000
MW of nuclear capacity in just over 12 months.
--Andreas Franke, andreas.franke@platts.com
--Edited by Dan Lalor, daniel.lalor@platts.com
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