ASNR opens a public consultation from 22 October to 2 December 2026 on a draft opinion on extending EDF’s reactors. Ageing, load-following and climate impacts remain under review.
The French nuclear safety and radiation protection authority (ASNR) presents a draft opinion on extending the operating life of EDF’s nuclear reactors on 22 October 2026 to the French parliamentary office for scientific and technological assessment (OPECST). Public consultation runs from 22 October to 2 December 2026, ahead of the authority’s final opinion. The position does not amount to a decision to extend operations.
A deadline affecting 56 reactors
The deadline concerns the 56 reactors commissioned in the 1980s and connected to the grid over a period of about fifteen years. Without an extension, EDF could face permanent shutdowns concentrated in a short period. The debate over the fleet’s lifespan comes as, according to the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), Chinese designs lead a global pipeline of 313 GWe of projects, and as The Nuclear Company proposes a 6.6 GW project in Kentucky.
“ASNR has not identified, given the current state of knowledge, any obstacles to continued operation of the reactors beyond 60 years for which EDF would not have levers for action,” Pierre-Marie Abadie, ASNR’s chairman, told Agence France-Presse (AFP). “Several technical issues still require substantial work from EDF to confirm the effectiveness of these levers and then incorporate them, at the appropriate time, into the safety case that will be submitted for the review.”
The 60-year review remains separate
“This is an anticipatory approach that consists of looking now at what will happen at the 60-year horizon of the reactors,” Pierre-Marie Abadie said. He rules out any early authorization for the deadlines expected around 2030-2040. “It is also a systemic safety issue,” so that at no point “public authorities find themselves having to choose between safety and security of supply.”
EDF’s reactors hold authorizations with no time limit. The utility must carry out an in-depth review every ten years, and ASNR analyzes its conclusions before setting the framework for continued operation. “This position is based on the current state of knowledge,” Pierre-Marie Abadie cautioned. He called for continued “vigilance and the earliest possible detection of developments and of degradation and ageing phenomena,” a necessary condition for “an extremely standardized fleet.”
Ageing, load-following and climate remain under review
ASNR examined potential bottlenecks tied to components that are hard to replace. “We looked at everything that could be a prohibitive obstacle to operation beyond 60 years,” Pierre-Marie Abadie explained. He cited “the ageing of certain equipment or structures essential to safety that are difficult or impossible to replace,” including the reactor vessel, the vessel pit and certain bends in the primary circuit.
Load-following is among the topics monitored by the authority. “French nuclear reactors have always been used to load-following, meaning varying their output level, but this phenomenon is growing with the arrival of renewables,” the ASNR chairman noted.
Climate change, the most uncertain area
Climate change remains the most uncertain area of the long-term review, following visible effects on the fleet during the heatwaves of summer 2026. It “is perhaps the subject with the greatest long-term uncertainty because scientific knowledge on the impact of climate change evolves over time,” Pierre-Marie Abadie acknowledged. “But it is also the subject on which EDF has levers for action,” he added, mentioning equipment changes or the reinforcement of water reserves upstream of the plants.
“Before the 60-year review, the roadmap produced at the end of the review we have just completed will first have to be implemented,” he said. ASNR will also ask EDF to “identify safety improvement issues” for the 2035 horizon. “All of this will in due course feed a generic review, carried out for all reactors, and a site-by-site review, because each reactor has its own specificities and its own local conditions,” he stated.
Source: Energy news