The past drifts, especially around Flamanville’s EPR reactor project, instibly on the capacity of the sector to build the new reactors announced Thursday by the President of the Republic.
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When Prime Minister Pierre Messmer launched the nuclear power program, in March 1974, shortly after the first oil shock, France was leaving an almost white leaf. She had renounced her “graphite-gas” die for the benefit of US pressurized water reactor technology and just started building the Fessenheim nuclear power plant (Haut-Rhin). Between 1977 and 2000, EDF will put 58 reactors in service, at the rate of four “tranches” certain years, for a cost estimated by the Court of Auditors to 96 billion euros.
The sector is now dragging a liability. EDF launched only a third-generation reactor, in 2007, the Flamanville (Manche) EPR, which has accumulated delays, malfaminating and injury to € 19 billion (cost of capital included). Many critical parts of the reactor and welds have proved defective. On the operating park, problems appeared on the steam generators and, in 2016, manipulations on parties for forged parts by AREVA NP (renamed Framatome in 2018) in its Chalon-sur-Saône plants (Saone-and -With) and Jeumont (North).
“The sector will be ready”
The Minister of the Economy, Bruno The Mayor, and the CEO of EDF, Jean-Bernard Lévy, had asked Jean-Martin Folz, ex-pattern of PSA, an in-depth audit of Flamanville missing. He concluded, at the end of 2019, at the end of 2019, at “a loss of generalized skills” in the historical operator and its subcontractors, in particular Framatome, manufacturer of the large components of the nuclear island (tanks, steam generators …). He recommended to EDF to “set up a powerful team to renew a real culture of quality”.
m. Lévy has created a General Delegate for Industrial Quality and Nuclear Skills, entrusted to Alain Tranzer, Head of Excellent Plan, aimed at removing EDF the great architect-board of the power plants he was in the 1970s. 1980. The past drifts have no less instilled doubt about the industrial and human capacities of the French sector – Naguère synonymous with excellence in the world – to build six EPR 2 by 2040, and eight others on the horizon 2050, as announced by the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, Thursday, February 10, in Belfort.
m. Tranzer estimated, in November 2021, that “the sector is transformed and will be ready to build the first six EPR, a program to more than 50 billion euros, in the budget and the schedule. He insured that there will be “enough margins in terms of costs and planning on the first reactor to be certain that we do not tell the good adventure”, confident in the “learning curve on the following reactors” . Especially since the EPR 2, “first reactor to be totally designed digitized”, according to EDF, must be “simpler to construct”, and less expensive, thanks to a series effect (pair construction) and of factory manufacture of some modules.
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