The French reactors were taken offline for scheduled maintenance and repairs. Those hours don't count against reliability metrics because the plants weren't expected to be operating.
The argument is lazy because it's false equivalence. A power plant failing suddenly is not the same thing as a power plant being taken offline to fix a known issue.
edit:
EDF has announced that they will be restarting their nuclear plants by winter. How this plays into the Russian gas shortage is that France also generates a lot of electricity off natural gas. By working to get the nuclear plants running by winter they won't need to run their natural gas generation plants, leaving more gas to be used for industrial purposes & home heating.
The argument is lazy because it's false equivalence. A power plant failing suddenly is not the same thing as a power plant being taken offline to fix a known issue.
edit: EDF has announced that they will be restarting their nuclear plants by winter. How this plays into the Russian gas shortage is that France also generates a lot of electricity off natural gas. By working to get the nuclear plants running by winter they won't need to run their natural gas generation plants, leaving more gas to be used for industrial purposes & home heating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7BlzKHfxPk