Earlier this month boiler cracks led to two of EDF’s nuclear power plants being shut down for two years. There’s no immediate health risk to the public, however there is a risk that some areas of the UK will suffer from winter blackouts this year as EDF races to put measures in place to compensate for the loss of energy created by its nuclear plants.
As the Daily Mail reports, two of Britain’s nuclear power plants closed in August over safety issues will not be fully up and running for another two years – triggering fears of blackouts this winter.
So what does this mean for EDF energy consumers?
If you are an EDF customer, it’s important to consider that EDF has a number of ways in which it generates its energy. The two closed nuclear power plants fuel thousands of homes in the UK, however so do EDF’s renewable energy sources and deals in wholesale supply. If you are a concerned EDF customer, use the EDF telephone number to contact them and discuss your case.
EDF is of course already finding ways to solve the problem. “As boiler spine defects can only develop into cracks at very high temperatures, two reactors at Hartlepool and one at Heysham 1 could be returned to service at around 75 per cent to 80 per cent power to reduce the temperature to which the boiler spines are exposed.” EDF said in a statement. This should alleviate some EDF customer concerns and reduce the backlog of EDF telephone number calls that are undoubtedly tallying up.
Nuclear power stations in the UK
This of course raises questions as to whether we need more nuclear power stations in the UK. The Government hasn’t created one to compensate for any downtime of others, and current power stations were not designed to compensate for the huge increase in population the UK has seen over the past fifty years.
2015 update – we now know that initial reports of this story were overblown. EDF took preventative measures to ensure that nuclear plant shut-downs did not affect customers, and the 2015 winter looks bright. So there’s no need to be worried. If we have any more updates, we’ll add them to this article.