France's Fessenheim Nuclear Plant Won't Close by 2016

France's oldest nuclear plant at Fessenheim will not close by 2016, President Francois Hollande was quoted saying on Thursday, going back on a campaign promise, but he added the government will launch "irreversible" procedures for shutting the plant.

France's energy transition law, voted through this summer, caps French nuclear capacity at its current level of 63.2 gigawatts (GW). But Hollande said there was no need to close Fessenheim yet, given the EPR reactor being built by state-owned EDF at Flamanville will not start up before end 2018.

"What matters however is to start the procedures for closing Fessenheim," Hollande said in an interview to be published in Le Parisien magazine. "We will do it. This way one can say that it is irreversible."

His comments confirm previous comments from Energy and Environment Minister Segolene Royal, who indicated earlier this month that Fessenheim would not be closed before the end of Hollande's mandate in May 2017.

The energy transition law specifies that the country will reduce its reliance on nuclear energy for electricity production to 50 percent by 2025 from about 75 percent today, but lays out no road map to achieve that target.

The law also specifies that EDF must request the closure of enough nuclear capacity at least 18 months before it starts up a new reactor, to guarantee it does not breach the capacity cap.

But as EDF has postponed Flamanville's start-up to end 2018, it does not have to identify closures until after the May 2017 presidential election - making Fessenheim's closure dependent on the re-election of the unpopular Socialist government.

However, the government could strongarm EDF, which argues strongly against any reactor closures, into launching the Fessenheim closing procedure by holding back the extension of its 10-year production authorisation for the plant, which expires in April 2017.

Royal said earlier this month she would issue a decree to that effect in the spring and that EDF would have to identify reactors to be shut down in exchange.

(Reporting by Jean-Baptiste Vey and Michel Rose)