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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