After years of delay, an EPR nuclear reactor of Franco-German design was put into service in Finland on Sunday to cover a third of the energy needs there, its operator, the TVO group, announced.
With a delay of thirteen years, the reactor should have come online in December, but its activation had to be postponed several times during its experimental period.
During the production test phase at the end of 2022, one of the three safety valves of the OL3 reactor at Olkiluoto in southwestern Finland, built by the French group Areva, was found to be defective.
15% of Finland’s electricity
Construction of the 1,600-megawatt reactor began in 2005 and, during experiments, it reached full operational capacity for the first time in September. The Olkiluoto plant also has two older nuclear reactors. According to TVO, the EPR supplied around 15% of Finland’s electricity during its experimental phase.
Developed by France, this EPR (European Pressurized Reactor) model was designed to revive nuclear power in Europe after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, and is touted as offering more power and better safety.
Its construction, however, represented a technical headache and not only in Finland. In France, the construction of the Flamanville EPR (north), started in 2007, was also affected by long delays. Two reactors have been commissioned in China.
Source: BFM TV
