France, Dec. 3 -- French President Emmanuel Macron said there was no reason to panic about possible power cuts this winter, but he called on citizens to use less energy and on state utility EDF to restart nuclear reactors to prevent outages in case of cold weather.

In an interview withFrenchTV station TF1 recorded during his state visit to theUnited Statesthis week,Macrondenied that the risk of rolling blackouts was due to inadequate management ofEDF's nuclear reactor restart programme.

"First of all, let us be clear: no panic! It is legitimate for the government to prepare for the extreme cases, which would mean cutting off electricity for a few hours per day if we did not have enough power," Macron said.

The head of French power grid...