EDF announced on Friday that it was still postponing the commissioning of its EPR nuclear reactor in Flamanville. In addition, two reactors currently stopped, one in Flamanville, the other in Penly, will restart with several weeks late.
by marjorie cessac
Hard blow, umpteenth delay. While trying to relaunch its nuclear fleet, whose production is at its lowest, EDF announced, Friday, December 16, that it still postponed the commissioning of its EPR nuclear reactor in Flamanville (Manche), due to weld repairs more difficult than expected. Announced at the start for the end of 2023, it should now only be effective in the first quarter of 2024.
These additional six months, which pay twelve years the delay in the project, will cost the operator 500 million euros, bringing his total bill from 12.7 billion to 13.2 billion euros, Or four times the initial budget of 3.3 billion euros. According to Alain Morvan, the director of the Flamanville 3 project, the work which is at the origin of these new delays and additional costs represent approximately 150 complex thermal treatment operations of certain welds, on connections of piping with valves that do not support the same heating temperatures.
These repairs had been interrupted in the summer and must resume in early 2023, with a loading of the fuel now announced for the first quarter of 2024. The reactor will send its first electrons when it has reached almost 25 % of its power, ” About three months later “, so by mid-2014. In addition to these technical vagaries, Mr. Morvan confirmed that EDF would comply with the request of the nuclear security authority aimed at replacing, at the end of 2024, the cover of the EPR tank, whose manufacturing was not in accordance with expectations. An approach that will involve a reactor early judgment compared to the programmed date of first replacement of its fuel.
Failure to be able to count as agreed on the EPR of Flamanville in 2023, France could therefore expose themselves to greater tensions on its supply of electricity during the winter of 2023-2024. And this, while more and more votes are rising to warn the increased risk of electricity shortage at this deadline, Europe no longer having to be able to count on Russian gas to fill its stocks.
In the meantime, the current winter is already under tension, with 41 reactors only in operation on the 56 that the French nuclear park has. Especially since, out of these 15 stop reactors, two should not restart in time, according to EDF. Flamanville reactor 1, which was to be operational on December 25, will not be ultimately not before February 19, 2023. As for the Penly reactor 1, in Seine-Maritime, which suffers from a “new indication of corrosion under constraint” , he should not force before March 20, 2023. His recovery was previously scheduled for January 23.
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