I am confused. You say yourself, that in November they needed to import 8GW. Which was necessary because the nuclear power plants didn't produce enough electricity. It was even worse in summer, where they were not only dealing with reactors down for repairs but also reactors with reduced power/shut down due to lack of cooling water.

So yes, France has a huge nuclear peak capacity, as they built a lot of reactors up to the 80ies. But basically none still then which means that they are increasingly fighting with keeping the old reactors running. Perhaps I was a bit short in my first post here, but they don't really have a strategy to deal with the situation. They would need to replace at least 50 power plants over the next 20 years to have a really good perspective, but no such plans in sight.