EDF announced on Friday an additional delay and an additional cost of the EPR nuclear reactor project in Flamanville (Manche), now estimated at 13.2 billion euros for a start-up scheduled for the first quarter of 2024, due to subsequent work to weld repairs more difficult than expected.
In its previous estimates, announced in January 2022, the group forecast a construction cost of 12.7 billion euros and the fuel load of the reactor in the second quarter of 2023. The project manager, Alain Morvan, specified at a press conference telephone that the Flamanville EPR will only be connected to the national electrical grid three months after refueling. “The first electrons produced will be delayed on the order of six months,” he added.
The work behind the new delays and additional costs for Flamanville EPR consists of some 150 complex heat treatment operations on certain welds, that is, on pipe connections with valves that cannot withstand the same heating temperatures, Alain Morvan explained.
More than 10 years late
This work, which followed repairs to faulty welds, was halted last summer and should resume in early 2023 as part of a new construction method. Alain Morvan also declared that EDF would comply with the request of the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) to replace the lid of the EPR vessel at the end of 2024 -whose manufacturing did not meet expectations-, which will imply an early closure of the reactor. in relation to the expected date of the first replacement of your fuel.
Estimated at €3 billion when the project was announced in 2004, the Flamanville EPR was initially due to enter service in 2012, but repeated difficulties at the site led to multiple delays and additional costs for the project.
EDF, which is in the process of renationalizing, is also suffering the effects of low availability of its nuclear park linked in particular to corrosion problems that led it on Thursday to postpone the restart date of a reactor, Penly 1, even though one month. While France faces the risk of power outages this winter, the group has also had to postpone the restart of the Flamanville No. 1 reactor by almost two months, which was scheduled for December 25, due, according to a spokesman, to the steam generator replacement operations. .
Source: BFM TV
