Yet more delays for Finland’s troubled Olkiluoto nuclear power project
Finnish Olkiluoto-3 nuclear unit tests slipping behind schedule: TVO https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/100418-finnish-olkiluoto-3-nuclear-unit-tests-slipping-behind-schedule-tvo, Elaine Hiruo –Jonathan Dart
HIGHLIGHTS
New final phase schedule due in December
Too early to say if first power tests delayed
Output schedule ‘available ahead of commercial op’
London — Areva-Siemens is to provide a new schedule in December for the final phases of the 1.6-GW Finnish Olkiluoto-3 nuclear reactor after slippage in its commissioning tests, owner operator TVO confirmed Thursday.
This could potentially push back first delivery of power in tests currently scheduled from May 2019, “but we won’t know this until December,” TVO spokesman Pasi Tuohimaa told S&P Global Platts.
Previously TVO has said test production over a roughly five-month period could account for 10%-15% of Finland’s annual electricity needs ahead of full commercial operation, or 2-4 TWh.
Such is the potential volume at risk that TVO is to put up a schedule of Olkiluoto-3’s production tests six months before commercial operation, Tuohimaa said. He stressed that at this stage it was impossible to assess accurately how much electricity would be produced during testing.
“The completion of the commissioning tests has not been progressing according to the updated schedule for commissioning by the plant supplier Areva-Siemens Consortium,” TVO said in a statement late Wednesday.
The operator could not say whether “rebaselining” of the final phase schedule would affect the current September target for the start of commercial operation at the plant, which is already almost 10 years behind the original schedule and three times over the original Eur3.2 billion budget.
Neither could TVO say whether test production of electricity at varying power levels from May 2019 would be affected by the re-scheduling.
In June 2017, TVO said Olkiluoto-3 would begin commercial operation in September 2019, rather than in May of that year as expected. Hot testing had taken longer than expected, it said.
Q2 2019 Nordic baseload power on the NASDAQ futures exchange traded Thursday 0900 GMT at Eur36.40/MWh, down 30 euro cent from two trades earlier in the European morning.
elaine.hiruo@spglobal.com– jonathan.dart@spglobal.com
Delay at Olkiluoto nuclear project French-German consortium Areva-Siemens unable to complete tests
Nuclear plant delay, YLE 4 Oct 18 Daily Turun Sanomat reports that the start of regular power production at Finland’s biggest nuclear reactor, Olkiluoto 3, may be pushed back yet again.
TVO – the owner of the power plant – said the French-German consortium Areva-Siemens has not been able to complete commissioning tests at the Eurajoki site as planned, the paper says. According to TVO, it is still unclear whether the supplier’s test delays will affect the launch of the plant, which has been scheduled for September 2019.
The project in western Finland has been hit by repeated delays, spiraling costs and legal disputes. The construction of the 1,600 MW reactor began in 2005, and initially it was scheduled to start producing electricity in 2009.
On Tuesday, Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority expressed concerns about the safety culture at energy company Fennovoima, which seeks to build a nuclear power plant in northern Finland. https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/thursdays_papers_bus_driver_walk-out_nuclear_power_plant_delay_and_finns_in_drug_bust/10438247
Finland company looks to China’s lucrative nuclear decommissionig and nuclear waste market
Finnish firms target Chinese radwaste market, WNN, 23 August 2018
Based on expected installed nuclear generating capacity of 50 GWe by 2020, China’s annual used fuel arisings will amount to about 1200 tonnes at that stage, the cumulative total being about 14,000 tonnes then.
“As China becomes increasingly mindful of environmental integrity and reduces its use of fossil fuels, [its] zero-carbon nuclear energy solution requires enhanced focus on radioactive waste management,” the companies said in a joint statement. “Finnish expertise has an important role in disposing of Chinese radioactive waste and building a cleaner future together with shared respect for nature and the environment.”……….Finnish waste management company Posiva – jointly owned by Fortum and TVO – launched Posiva Solutions in June 2016. The business, it said, would “focus on the marketing of the know-how accumulated from the design, research and development efforts in the final disposal of used nuclear fuel, as well as on associated consulting services”. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Finnish-firms-target-Chinese-radwaste-market
Warming sea water affecting cooling systems in Finland’s nuclear power station

Warm sea water in Finland reduces power from Loviisa nuclear plant https://www.reuters.com/article/us-finland-nuclear-fortum-oyj/warm-sea-water-in-finland-reduces-power-from-loviisa-nuclear-plant-idUSKBN1KF2COLefteris Karagiannopoulos 26 July 18 OSLO (Reuters) – Finland’s Loviisa power plant, consisting of two reactors with a combined capacity of 1 gigawatt, had to reduce power by 170 megawatts on Wednesday as the sea water that is used to cool the reactors had become too warm, operator Fortum said.
Because of the very warm temperatures the Nordic region is currently experiencing, the sea water that is collected to cool the Loviisa reactors is warmer and the water released is also warmer, at 32 degrees Celsius on Wednesday.
Releasing hot water back to the sea after cooling the reactors could be a hazard and if it exceeds 34 degrees Fortum said the reactors must be shut down due to regulations.
“We decreased power by 170 megawatts for a bit less than two hours. The sea water that cools the reactors was at 24 degrees, which is warmer than usual,” Fortum’s chief of operations in the plant, Timo Eurasto, told Reuters.
Such a rare occurrence may happen again in the next days because of the unusually warm temperatures, he said, adding that there was no danger to people, the plant, or the environment.
“High sea water temperature may indeed reduce the efficiency of the cooling systems of the plant. This is compensated by reducing or shutting down the reactor power,” said Nina Lahtinen, nuclear safety section head at Finland’s regulator STUK.
In Germany traders warned last week that higher temperatures in August may create cooling issues for the country’s reactors, with E.ON subsidiary PreussenElektra cutting output slightly from two units.
Sweden’s nuclear energy regulator SSM, told Reuters on Tuesday that power production at the Forsmark nuclear plant has also been reduced “by a few percentage points” due to cooling issues.
Last time Fortum had to reduce power in its reactors due to warmer-than-usual cooling water was seven years ago, said Loviisa plant’s Eurasto.
Unusually warm and dry weather in the Nordics led temperatures to record highs this summer, affecting water levels at the reservoirs that feed Norway and Sweden with hydropower, causing prices to spike as a result.
Finland’s nuclear waste dump will still be in the trial stage for years
Nucnet 25th June 2018, A full-scale in-situ system test for spent nuclear fuel disposal is
expected to begin this week at Posiva’s planned final deep geologic
disposal facility at Olkiluoto, Finland. Posiva’s owner Teollisuuden
Voima Oyj (TVO) said the test will be the first of its kind and means that
Posiva is making progress towards the operational test phase of its final
disposal system and technology.
According to TVO, the test will last for
several years. It aims to prove that the prototype processes for geological
storage at Posiva’s repository are “all working concepts”. The test
has been in preparation since December 2017, TVO said. The processes
include placing fuel assemblies packed in copper-steel canisters inside
holes drilled in the bedrock tunnels. This is followed by backfilling the
tunnels with bentonite clay and sealing them with a cast plug. Two test
canisters will be equipped with thermal resistors simulating the residual
temperature of spent nuclear fuel, TVO said. A TVO official said the
temperature and pressure in the canisters, test holes and the surrounding
bedrock, and the behaviour of the backfill of the tunnels, will be
monitored by some 500 sensors over several years.
https://www.nucnet.org/all-the-news/2018/06/25/finland-s-posiva-to-begin-world-s-first-in-situ-system-test-at-final-repository-site
New problem is troubling Finland’s Olkiluoto 3 nuclear project
Tekniik & Talous 14th May 2018 , [Machine Translation] New problems have arisen in TVO’s hot tests at
Olkiluoto 3. The connection line of the main pipework of the plant, the reactor cooling circuit, vibrates more than allowed. The problem is reported by the supervising authority Stuk in its recent monitoring report.
The problem has emerged in hot tests where the reactor and turbine plant systems are heated by the heat generated by the main circulation pumps to the correct operating temperatures. Heat tests ensure that the facility is safe to charge nuclear fuel. Before that, the body still needs a government license. According to Stuk, the reason for the vibration is still under way. Stuk explains the following. In Stucco’s Executive Director Petteri Tiippana, the problem is not negligible.
https://www.tekniikkatalous.fi/tekniikka/energia/olkiluoto-3-n-tarkein-putkisto-varahtelee-liikaa-stukin-mukaan-korjaaminen-on-mittava-tyo-6724597
Finland’s nuclear power plant’s price tag – at least $11 billion
Costlier Than Pyramids: Finnish NPP Becomes World’s Second-Priciest Building, Sputnik News
EUROPE 19.03.2018
The Finnish Olkiluoto-3 nuclear reactor has been touted as the “flagship of European nuclear energy,” but has taken more than a decade to complete and cost the Nordic nation an arm and a leg.
When completed, the third reactor at Finland’s Olkiluoto nuclear power plant will have the distinction of being the world’s second most expensive building, higher than that of a number of luxury hotels, sports arenas, skyscrapers and even pyramids, Finnish national broadcaster Yle reported.
With a breathtaking price tag of €8.5 billion ($11 billion), Olkiluoto-3 is expected to be finished in 2019, 14 years after the start of the construction. For the sake of comparison, the Cheops Pyramid, the largest of the pyramids at Giza, took about 20 years to build. However, construction of the 4,500-year-old pyramid turned to be far more efficient, as it was built over roughly the same period of time and without access to modern technology. Also, its cost in today’s money has been estimated at only €4 billion ($4.9), half the Olkiluoto price tag.
To offer a more modern building for comparison, New York’s replacement One World Trade Center cost an estimated $3.8 billion to build. …….https://sputniknews.com/europe/201803191062679754-finland-npp-price/
Latest in the AREVA nuclear soap opera: Areva to pay Finland’s TVO 450 mln euros
Le Monde 10th March 2018, [Machine Translation] EPR: epilogue of the Finnish soap opera Areva. The nuclear group will pay hundreds of millions of euros in penalties for the
delay of ten years in the Olkiluoto reactor project.
http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2018/03/10/epr-areva-en-passe-de-solder-son-lourd-contentieux-finlandais-avec-tvo_5268784_3234.html
Areva to pay Finland’s TVO 450 mln euros over nuclear reactor dispute https://www.reuters.com/article/tvo-areva-olkiluoto-settlement/areva-to-pay-finlands-tvo-450-mln-euros-over-nuclear-reactor-dispute-idUSL8N1QT0N1 Reuters Staff HELSINKI, March 11 (Reuters) – Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) said on Sunday it had agreed a settlement with French nuclear company Areva and Germany’s Siemens in the long-running dispute over cost overruns and delays on their EPR nuclear reactor project.
Areva-Siemens will pay TVO compensation of 450 million euros ($553.73 million), the Finnish company said in a statement.
TVO and Areva-Siemens were claiming billions of euros from each other due to the delays in the Olkiluoto 3 reactor project in southwest Finland. Its start was postponed last year to May 2019 – a decade later than planned.
$1 = 0.8127 euros Reporting by Tuomas Forsell
Norway and Finland find tiny amounts of recently released radioactive particles in the air
Barents Observer 26th Feb 2018. Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) says tiny amounts
of radioactive iodine-131 were measured in the air Kotka, east of Helsinki
in late January. The same isotope was then measured again last week north
to Kajaani. The levels were very low, ranging from 0,7 to 1,6
micro-becquerel per cubic meter air, STUK says in a news release
From where the radioactivity is coming is still unknown. Radioactive iodine-131
has a half-life of only eight days so the measurements are proof of a
rather recent release.
The source could be a nuclear reactor, a facility
producing isotopes for medical purposes or by releases from a nuclear
weapons related test. Norway’s Radiation Protection Authority (NRPA) on
Monday confirms detection of radioactive iodine also at several of the
country’s air-measurement stations.
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/ecology/2018/02/traces-radioactive-iodine-air
Russia’s pension funds for elderly – used to pay for building Finland’s nuclear power plant
“Finland’s Pyhäjoki nuclear plant takes our pension money” While four million elderly Russians live below the poverty line, the country’s pension fund pays for Rosatom-backed nuclear plant in northern-Finland. «Deeply unfair,» says Oleg Bodrov from the closed town of Sosnovy Bor near St. Petersburg. Barents Observer By Thomas Nilsen, January 29, 2018
Nuclear power plants must be able to withstand fires caused by aircraft impacts
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180116123750.htm
- Date:
- January 16, 2018
- Source:
- VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
- Summary:
- Researches examined the transport, evaporation and combustion of liquids in large-scale fire incidents.
In his dissertation, Topi Sikanen, a Master of Science (Technology) and Research Scientist at VTT, examined the transport, evaporation and combustion of liquids in large-scale fire incidents. He developed practical models which will help to predict the consequences for nuclear power plants of fires caused by aircraft impacts.
Analyses of airliner impacts became mandatory after terrorists deliberately crashed two aircraft into the World Trade Center twin towers in New York in 2001.
Nuclear power plants must continuously improve their safety standards. A modern nuclear power plant, for example, must withstand fires caused by aircraft crashing into it. In his dissertation, Topi Sikanen developed methods of modelling unusual and major accidents. The practical outcome of the dissertation was a number of tested, applicable models which help to predict the consequences of fires at nuclear power plants
Sikanen applied the computational tools of fluid dynamics to the fire safety analyses he presented in his three-part dissertation. The first part of the dissertation concerns the conveyance of liquid discharged from fuel tanks in connection with aircraft impacts. In the second part, Sikanen modelled liquid pool fires, the evaporation of liquid, and the heat transfer. In the last part, Sikanen applied the methods that he had developed to the analysis of the impact of aircraft crashing into a nuclear power plant.
The results of the safety and fire safety analyses presented in this dissertation, which falls under construction technology, can be used by the designers and implementers of nuclear power plants and other large buildings.
The troubled and exorbitantly expensive history of the EPR nuclear reactor.
Romandie 9th Jan 2018, [Machine translation] The EPR, the flagship of the French nuclear industry
with many setbacks. Paris – The EPR, to be launched for the first time in China in about six months, is a third-generation nuclear reactor designed to offer improved power and safety, but whose yards have accumulated setbacks in France and elsewhere. Finland.
Launched in 1992, this technology, touted as the flagship of the French nuclear industry, was co-developed by the French company Areva and German Siemens, within their joint venture Areva NP, which Siemens has since withdrawn. EDF has just taken control of this activity as part of the reorganization of the French nuclear industry orchestrated by the State.
The first project was launched in Olkiluoto (Finland) in 2005, on behalf of the TVO electrician, with Areva and Siemens directly prime contractors. But the setbacks and budget slippages have accumulated. TVO lamented an umpteenth delay in the commissioning of the EPR in October, which is now scheduled for May 2019. It was initially scheduled for 2009.
There is a dispute between TVO and Areva and Siemens, with each party blaming the delays on the other.
claiming billions in compensation. The case is under arbitration.
The second EPR, which has been under construction since 2007 in Flamanville (western France) has also accumulated setbacks, mainly due to anomalies discovered on the composition of the steel cover and bottom of the tank. The Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) requires that the tank cover be replaced before the end of 2024. EDF, prime contractor, has postponed the commissioning of the reactor several times. The electrician plans to start the Flamanville EPR at the end of 2018, for commercial commissioning in
2019, when the initial schedule was for 2012.
Its cost has meanwhile more than tripled to 10.5 billion euros. Two other EPRs are under construction in Taishan (China), with a joint venture owned 51% by the Chinese state power company CGN, 30% by EDF and, since 2012, 19% by the electrical utility of
Guangdong province.
https://www.romandie.com/news/878943.rom
Owners and suppliers of Finland’s Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor – locked in dispute over delayed project

Reuters 14th Nov 2017, Pohjolan Voima Oy (PVO), the largest shareholder in Finland’s
long-delayed Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor, could make additional
compensation claims against suppliers Areva and Siemens following a recent
setback, PVO said on Tuesday.
The start of regular power production at
Olkiluoto 3 – Finland’s largest reactor – was last month postponed by
another five months to May 2019. “It (further compensation) has been
briefly discussed (within PVO). I don’t want to enter further this topic
as it is an issue for (reactor operator) Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) to
decide,” PVO CEO Lauri Virkkunen, told Reuters.
The owners and supplier are locked in a dispute over the plant’s delays at the International
Chamber of Commerce, where TVO is claiming 2.6 billion euros ($3.06
billion) from the Areva-led consortium, which has filed a counter-claim of
3.6 billion euros….
Areva-Siemens and the Finnish electricity company TVO blame each other for delays in nuclear build
L’Usine Nouvelle 27th Oct 2017[Machine translation] Areva in the quagmire of the Finnish EPR. A further
delay in commissioning the Olkiluoto EPR in Finland is further complicating
the task of Areva SA, the new entity dedicated mainly to the end of the
project.
At this rate, the EPR Flamanville (Channel) will be put into
service before that of Olkiluoto in Finland. On October 9th, the
Areva-Siemens consortium informed the Finnish electrician Teollisuuden
Voima Oyj (TVO) that he was still cutting back the connection to the
reactor network in May 2019. It was initially planned for 2009!
And the penultimate postponement fixed the end of the test period at the end of
2018. After ten years of overtaking and 5 billion euros of additional cost,
the consortium Areva-Siemens and the Finnish electricity company TVO accuse
each other of the delay. The first claims 3.5 billion euros in compensation
to TVO, which continues for 2.6 billion.
https://www.usinenouvelle.com/article/areva-dans-le-bourbier-de-l-epr-finlandais.N604108
Still more delay in Finland’s Olkiluoto-3 nuclear power plant
French-backed Finnish nuclear plant delayed again https://www.ft.com/content/99922334-acc8-11e7-aab9-abaa44b1e130 High-profile power station likely to start production more than a decade late
OCTOBER 9, 2017 by Richard Milne, Nordic Correspondent A high-profile French-backed nuclear power plant in Finland has been delayed yet again, meaning it is likely to start production more than a decade late. Western Europe’s first new nuclear power station for more than two decades will now start production in May 2019 rather than at the end of 2018 as previously announced, according to the Finnish consortium behind the Olkiluoto-3 plant.
Using a similar European pressurised reactor to the one envisaged for the UK’s controversial Hinkley Point plant, the Finnish project — led by French reactor manufacturer Areva — has been regularly beset by delays and huge cost overruns. Olkiluoto-3 was originally meant to start production in spring 2009 and cost €3.2bn but the last price estimate was almost three times as high. “We are very disappointed by this additional delay. There is still substantial work to be accomplished in the project and it is essential that all the necessary technical, human and financial resources are allocated to the project,” said Jouni Silvennoinen, head of the Olkiluoto-3 project at operator TVO.
TVO is particularly concerned about the reorganisation of the French nuclear industry under which utility EDF has taken over the lead role for the development of Hinkley Point. The Finnish nuclear plant operator is worried that France will prioritise another much-delayed project locally in Flamanville over Olkiluoto. “The restructuring of the French nuclear industry must not compromise [that enough resources be directed to Olkiluoto],” Mr Silvennoinen said. TVO took the unusual step last month of complaining to the European Commission that French state aid for Areva was not enough.
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