More French nuclear offline as heatwave persists

French nuclear output dropped 6.3 GW (14% of demand) across eight reactors on Monday due to a prolonged heatwave limiting cooling water availability. Environmental regulations require EDF to curtail output when river temperatures exceed safety thresholds, with further outages expected as the heatwave persists through mid-week. If you sell industrial cooling systems, power infrastructure software, or grid balancing tools to European utilities, heatwaves are now your sales cycle. France loses 14% of power capacity when rivers warm—that's a permanent operating cost until nuclear plants get retrofitted or relocated, and it's spreading east this week.