http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/kurt-zenz-house/the-curious-oil-and-natural-gas-price-differential

EDF is another story, because it is driven by the French govt desire/need to find work for the French nuclear build industry, until generally younger French nuclear plant requires replacing.

France already has excess nuc power, such that they have to load-follow which is sub-optimal for nucs. The oldest PWRs are 1977 built, and at 900MW are decent kit. 40 years takes the oldest to 2017, 50 years to 2027. They don’t need new nucs now, except as make-work.

In the US they are talking/researching life-extending PWRs toward 60 years, and 40 years is very ordinary.

If EDF was to profit-optimise it wouldn’t order any new nucs until 2012 at the very earliest, more likely about 2022. In fact to profit-optimise it would probably buy gas plant until all the remaining nucs run base-load. But such delays would near kill the French nuclear build industry, so EDF will be pressured to order excessive plant in France early. E.ON isn’t so easy to are-twist.