EDF Shares Plunge After Faults Were Found In French Nuke Plants

Shares in EDF plunged on Thursday after the French power giant found faults at a nuclear power station and shut down another plant using the same kind of reactors, leading it to cut its core profit goal for this year, Dominique Vidalon and Benjamin Mallet reported for Reuters.

Photo Insert: An EDF personnel conducts a routine inspection.

France's Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) said EDF had informed it that the company had detected cracks due to corrosion on the pipes of a reactor at the Civaux power plant in western France.

It said EDF, which has extended the outage of its Civaux station as a result and also stopped the Chooz plant in eastern France as it uses the same technology, was investigating to determine the cause of the faults. The watchdog will closely monitor EDF's review, it said.

Separately, the French Institute of Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety, another public agency, said checks on other EDF reactors were likely to be necessary.

The setback comes as France plans a major nuclear power station building program, diverging from neighbor Germany which retreated from nuclear power after Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.

France's biggest electricity supplier said late Wednesday some faults were detected close to the welds on the pipes of the safety injection-system circuit in the two reactors at Civaux. It said having the Civaux and Chooz reactors offline would result in a loss of about 1 Terawatt-hour by the end of 2021.

As a result, it cut its core earnings (EBITDA) estimate to a range of 17.5-18 billion euros from a previous target of more than 17.7 billion euros, based on current market prices.

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