FRENCH NUCLEAR

ANOTHER DELAY FOR THE FLAMANVILLE EPR

The Flamanville EPR (Manche) will be another six months late before its commissioning, now scheduled for mid-2024, EDF announced this Friday, December 16, 2022, when France is relaunching a program nuclear to ensure its energy transition.

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The start-up of this reactor, the first of this generation planned on French soil, will thus take place with a total delay of 12 years compared to the initial planning. Two other EPRs are already operating in China and a third in Finland.

These six additional months, which bring the delay to 12 years in relation to the start date initially planned, result in the total cost of the project, under construction since 2007, rising from 12.7 to 13.2 billion euros, i.e. four times the initial budget of 3.3 billion euros.

Necessary revision of “complex” welds

The new delay is due to the necessary revision of treatment procedures for some 150 “complex” welds, within the main secondary circuit of the reactor, explained to the press the director of the Flamanville 3 project, Alain Morvan.

The problem appeared this summer, when it was necessary to carry out the heat treatment of "stress relief" of these welds: the process used revealed a "non-conformity of behavior" of sensitive materials nearby, affected by too high temperatures.

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“We had valve temperature behavior that did not conform to what was expected,” explained Alain Morvan, hence the resumption of “studies to define a method (…) making it possible to guarantee the correct level of achievement of these heat treatments”.

These modifications "have been presented to Bureau Veritas, which analyzes them, and by the end of the year we will have the authorization to resume the so-called complex heat treatments", assured the project director.

Another shutdown planned by the end of 2024

These operations should therefore be able to resume at the start of 2023, but the entire project schedule is upset, with fuel loading now announced for the 1st quarter of 2024. The reactor will send its first electrons when it has reached nearly 25% of its power. , "about three months later", so by mid-2024.

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The additional 500 million euros announced this Friday are mainly related to the maintenance of personnel and subcontracting companies on site.

In addition to these technical hazards, a shutdown of the reactor is already planned to change, by the end of 2024, the lid of its tank which presents anomalies, recalled Alain Morvan.

However, "the Flamanville EPR has taken new strategic steps in recent months, in its pre-operation phase", welcomes EDF in a press release, citing the resumption of certain welds or the testing of electrical equipment.

Macron announced the order of six or even 14 new EPRs

Since 2007, the site of this reactor, designed to offer increased power and safety, has been accumulating disappointments, whether it be anomalies on the steel of the lid and bottom of the vessel or welding problems.

The latest come as Emmanuel Macron announced the order of six or even 14 new EPRs and that Parliament must decide on France's energy model.

In the absence of the Flamanville EPR next year, France should therefore once again face tensions over its electricity supply during the winter of 2023-24.

The current winter gives a taste of these tensions, with Friday, December 16, 2022, 41 reactors in operation only out of 56.