The new deadline is due to the necessary revision of processing procedures of some 150 “complex” welds, within the reactor’s main secondary circuit, the Flamanville 3 project director, Alain Morvan, explained to the press. p>
mo12345lemonde with AFP
The delay is now twelve years. EDF announced, Friday, December 16, six months of additional delay for the commissioning of its EPR nuclear reactor in Flamanville (Manche), which must now start by mid-2024 instead of the end of 2023.
These additional six months are translated into a new additional cost of 500 million euros, passing the total cost of the project, under construction since 2007, from 12.7 to 13.2 billion euros.
The new deadline is due to the necessary revision of processing procedures of some 150 “complex” welds, within the reactor’s main secondary circuit, the Flamanville 3 project director, Alain Morvan, explained to the press. p>
The problem appeared this summer, when it was necessary to carry out the heat treatment of “detecting” of welds: the process used revealed a “non-compliance of behavior” of sensitive materials nearby, affected by too strong temperatures. “We had a behavior of the temperatures of the valves not in accordance with what we expected,” explained Mr. Morvan.
“We stopped the heat treatment last summer and resumed studies to define a method, and carried out tests to guarantee the good level of carrying out these thermal treatments,” he said. “These files were presented at Bureau Veritas, who analyzes them, and by the end of the year we will have the authorization to resume the so -called” complex “thermal treatments, said the project director.
The upset project calendar 2>
These operations should therefore be able to resume in early 2023, but the whole schedule of the project is turned upside down: the loading of the fuel is now announced for the first quarter 2024. Then, the reactor will send its first electrons on the network when it will have reached almost 25 % of its power, “about three months later”, so by mid-2010, rather than at the end of 2023 as planned previously.
The 500 million euros in additional costs are essentially linked to the maintenance of staff and companies on site, said EDF manager.