nuclear-news

Years more delay for EDF’s Flamanville nuclear power station

EDF’s French nuclear plant faces years of further delay, Ft.com 20 Mar 16 Kiran Stacey and Tom Burgis EDF’s new nuclear power station in France faces years of further delays if tests confirm that the steel used in its reactor is flawed, the country’s atomic watchdog has warned.

It is one of the clearest signals to date of the scale of the setback faced by the French utility. The flagship plant at Flamanville in Normandy has already been subject to years of delays and cost overruns, which have made it difficult for EDF to fund the identically designed £18bn reactor at Hinkley Point in the UK — a key element in Britain’s energy strategy.

Initially, Flamanville was expected to cost €3.3bn and start operations in 2012 — it is now planned to start in 2018 at a cost of €10.5bn.

But Julien Collet, the deputy director of France’s Nuclear Safety Authority, has said that it could be delayed further by several years, depending on the results of tests started last year and due to end this summer on the steel being used in the reactor core.

If the steel fails the tests, regulators could order EDF to rip out and replace the top and bottom of the reactor vessel. Mr Collet told the Financial Times: “It takes a lot of time to build new components like this — we’re talking years.”……

The concerns over the steel used in the Flamanville plant are only the latest in a string of misfortunes at that project and another in Finland, both of which use Areva’s European Pressurised Reactor, or EPR, model.

These delays have caused difficulties for EDF’s contentious new project at Hinkley Point in Somerset, which was originally planned for 2017 but is now set to be built by 2025…….

EDF was thrown a lifeline last week, however, when Emmanuel Macron, the French economy minister said his government would recapitalise the company if necessary.

But executives will come under scrutiny on Wednesday when they are grilled in Westminster about Hinkley Point by MPs on the cross-party energy select committee. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/73d62552-ec65-11e5-bb79-2303682345c8.html#axzz43g9nsyxB

March 23, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, France