🛢 Energy & Commodities mixed · 0–6 months
A what‑if from the future

What if fresh reactor cracks force more of France's EDF fleet offline?

More EDF stress-corrosion outages tighten French nuclear into winter, bidding up TTF/German baseload and pulling EUR/USD lower on a worse terms-of-trade. Rhymes with H2-2022 when EDF's corrosion-driven half-fleet outage forced record French power imports and added to the gas squeeze. France normally exports power to Italy/UK/Germany; flipping to importer drains the whole NW-European pool. Forward angle: gas storage starts fuller than 2022, so the spike is shorter and more weather-path-dependent.

25%
our model probability
over 0–6 months
prediction markets — wisdom of the crowd
loading live odds…
Empirically anchored 25% · 90% range 5–46% · 14 analogues · measured class power 52% in 6 mo · 3% held back for the unknown
how we built this number — every step
Measured class rate — power ≈1.4869/yr → 52% in 6 mo52%
Analyst prior · editorial share 57% of the class30%
Pooled · weight 70%26%
Crowd — no liquid market
Reserve 3% · no extremizing (×1.0)26%
Published25%

The class rate is measured from our dated, sourced event library (decade-normalized Poisson — the full table is public at base_rates.json). The variant’s share within its class is the analyst’s editorial call, published so you can audit it. A wider range means thinner precedent. Full recipe: methodology · scored at Reality Check.

The butterfly cascade

How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.

Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving

Our model's odds (gold) over time vs the crowd's (Polymarket, blue), from the past toward the 0–6 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. The gold path is an illustrative reconstruction anchored to today's estimate — real dated events, not a live re-estimate history.

loading the timeline…

What it would mean

If this plays out, it is a mixed shock. Fresh stress-corrosion cracks found in 2026 inspections force more EDF reactors offline, spiking European power prices. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Natural gas ▲ · European energy ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.

If it happens — the markets it would move

Biggest moves first. Projected moves are cascade-model priors; hist A–B% = what comparable past events actually did (measured abnormal returns), and model prior · unmeasured marks markets with no analogue backing yet. Tap any market for its price history.

MarketClassProjected move
1Natural gas NGon Hyperliquid 📈 chartCommodity▲ +0.4%
hist -10.34–+6.43% · other way +6.89% (n=6)
2EUR/USD EURUSDon Hyperliquid 📈 chartFX▼ -0.3%
hist -0.81–+0.32% · other way +0.57% (n=6)

Probable recommendation

If the scenario above plays out, the probable cross‑asset positioning → a scenario‑conditional read, not personalized investment advice
For a common-man portfolio: Mixed for a typical portfolio — the move is more about rotation than direction. Favour the winners over the losers below rather than net exposure.

Why we may diverge from history

Trust the cascade long on NG: -3.8% is off-channel — analogues are Iran missiles, Russian transit-end, Venezuela, not a cold-snap squeeze; fresh EDF outages spiking power are the gas-demand shock that sample omits.

Historical precedent — what analogous events actually did

Across 14 analogous events (overlap‑weighted), as abnormal returns — market beta stripped, so it's the event's own effect, not the market backdrop. Shown at 20 days (persistent) and 5 days (immediate); ↺ fades = the two horizons disagree. Confidence = consistency × sample × significance.

PJM grid emergency during Winter Storm Elliott 2022-12 Texas grid failure during Winter Storm Uri 2021-02 Northeast blackout cascading grid failure hits ~55 million 2003-08 Niger coup d'etat 2023-07 California rolling blackouts during a record heatwave 2020-08 Norilsk Nickel Arctic diesel spill 2020-05 Crude oil all-time high 2008-07 Henry Hub natural gas spot price peaks during 2008 commodity boom 2008-07 Platinum hits all-time record near $2,290 on South African power crisis 2008-03 South Africa Eskom power emergency spikes platinum/PGMs 2008-01 Amaranth Advisors natural-gas blowup 2006-09 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan 1979-12 Iran hostage crisis / US freezes Iranian assets 1979-11 1979 Iranian Revolution oil shock 1979-01
AssetHistory saysAbnormal (20d · 5d)HitnConfidencevs cascade
Bitcoin BTCSHORT-2.5% · 5d -0.0%83%5 0.34·
NG NGSHORT-10.8% · 5d -3.7%68%11 0.33⚠ differs
High-yield credit HYGSHORT-0.1% · 5d +0.1% ↺ fades55%9 0.07·
Gold XAUSHORT-1.1% · 5d -0.3%52%11 0.04·
EURUSD EURUSDSHORT-0.6% · 5d +0.4% ↺ fades50%10 0.00✓ matches cascade
Volatility VIXSHORT-1.0% · 5d -1.4%44%11 0.00·
US dollar DXYLONG+0.1% · 5d -0.5% ↺ fades45%14 0.00·
10y yield DGS10LONG+9bp · 5d +6bp48%14 0.00·

Why this probability

EDF stress-corrosion cracks recur historically, but a fresh price-spiking wave in 6mo is moderate-odds. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.

Methodology. Probability and impact are anchored to history and scored against what actually happens — wins and losses, in public, at Reality Check. Crowd odds live from Polymarket & Kalshi. By Vikas Singh, Quantitative Strategist. Updated 2026-07-03.