France has one of the cheapest electricity price in Europe thanks to nuclear plants. The reactors were checked if they respect to new regulations from the post-Fukushima era.
> The discovery of widespread carbon segregation problems in critical nuclear plant components has crippled the French power industry—20 of the country’s 58 reactors are currently offline and under heavy scrutiny. France’s nuclear safety chairman said more anomalies “will likely be found,” as the extent of the contagion is still being uncovered.
> Generally the prices in France are kept low, because the tax payer pays for the expensive nuclear industry monopoly.
And also because the decommissioning costs are not factored in at all. Currently EDF is pushing to extend the operating life of old reactors to 60 years, and to postpone their decommissioning to 2100. They want to just leave them there in the meanwhile. The trouble is that they simply don't know how to do the decommissioning, and it proves incredibly more expensive than thought. The fund that was set up to pay for it is undersized by a large factor.
Right. They will see that it is much more expensive than the tiny fund they have prepared for it. Germany, with way less nuclear power plants, has more money in its decommissioning fund than France.
Generally: The political system in France makes it impossible to demand market prices for electricity. It's all centralized and monopolistic. EDF is the large state owned electricity producer. It has around 80% market share.
Imagine now a steep electricity price rise. This would be highly unpopular and the french president would not be re-elected.
