Liberation 17th July 2018, Flamanville: NGOs lodge a complaint against EDF for “breaches” of security.
Sortir du nucléaire and Greenpeaceare to take legal action this Wednesday morning in the case of defective welds detected on the pipes of the future EPR reactor. The soap opera of the shipyard of the EPR reactor, built by EDF on the Flamanville power station (Manche), takes a legal turn.
Romandie 18th July 2018 Framatome (formerly Areva NP) has completed the analysis of the anomalies
detected on the manufacturing files of components manufactured on its site
of Le Creusot (Saône-et-Loire) for the French reactors of EDF, and the
factory is now “fully operational,” said Wednesday a company executive. The
audit launched in 2015 after detecting the existence of anomalies involved
three phases: an inspection step, or a review of “nearly 4,000 files”, then
a technical analysis phase of any discrepancies raised. which is “totally
finished for all the parts of the French park”, said David Emond, director
of the division Components of Framatome, during a press point in Le
Creusot. “We still have to finish a number of foreign customers, and it
will be done at the end of the year,” he added. The Nuclear Safety
Authority (ASN) must now complete the study, reactor by reactor as
scheduled maintenance stops by EDF, the results transmitted by Framatome. https://www.romandie.com/news/937602.rom
A French parliamentary inquiry has flagged up “failings” in the defences of the country’s nuclear power plants, days after activists crashed a drone into a facility to underscore safety concerns.
“When you look for failings you find them, and some are more concerning than others,” said Barbara Pompili, a lawmaker from the governing Republic on the Move party.
France is the world’s most nuclear-dependent country, with 58 reactors providing 75 percent of its electricity.
Environmentalist group Greenpeace has carried out a string of break-ins at nuclear facilities in recent years to prove its claim that they are vulnerable to accidents and terror attacks.
In the latest stunt Tuesday, it flew a drone mocked up as Superman into an ageing plant in Bugey, about 25 kilometres (16 miles) outside the southeastern city of Lyon.
The drone crashed into a building housing a storage pool for spent nuclear fuel, one of the most radioactive areas at the site.
The cross-party commission tasked with looking into nuclear safety spent five months interviewing experts and visiting facilities, including in Japan where they reviewed measures taken after the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant.
The lawmakers said the number of safety incidents in France “has risen steadily”.
They cited in particular last year’s temporary shutdown of the four reactors at a plant in Tricastin in the southeast, seen as prone to flooding in the event of an earthquake, and a blast at a facility at Flamanville in the north.
The report recommended 33 steps to improve nuclear safety, including boosting police numbers at atomic plants and reducing the number of subcontractors in the industry.
We cannot verify’
President Emmanuel Macron has been noncommittal about a pledge by his Socialist predecessor Francois Hollande to drastically reduce the share of nuclear power in France’s energy mix.
Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot said in November that meeting Hollande’s targets would be “difficult” and that a rushed move to bolster the share of renewables could jeopardise power supplies.
Anti-nuclear campaigners argue that older plants, like the 39-year-old Bugey facility, were not built to withstand an attack from the likes of the Islamic State group or Al-Qaeda.
Greenpeace has said the pools for storing spent fuel are particularly vulnerable.
The parliamentary report demanded that the government provide a timetable for dismantling older plants.
It also questioned the safety of a plan to store nuclear waste deep underground in the northeastern village of Bure and called for the number of subcontractors in the nuclear industry to be kept to a minimum, “to improve control over the operation of the sites”.
State energy utility EDF said the report contained “a number of errors” and said it would respond by mid-July.
The MPs for their part complained that many of the questions they put to the state and EDF went unanswered, with both invoking national security concerns.
“We have the feeling that a lot of work is being done to protect the plants but we cannot verify it,” Pompili said.
FT 6th July 2018 ,A French government commission has called for improvements in the safety of
the country’s nuclear power plants, including their ability to withstand
terrorist attack, putting further pressure on state-backed power utility
EDF.
The parliamentary commission set up to look at the safety and security
of nuclear installations in France said, in a report published on Thursday,
that the fleet remain vulnerable to accident and attack. The report comes
at a time of heightened political pressure for heavily indebted EDF, which
operates France’s nuclear fleet and faces a multi-billion euro bill to
extend the life of ageing plants.
Although an EPR is now coming online in
China, EDF is waiting for its Flamanville plant in France, which is seven
years late and €7bn over budget, to start up. A recently discovered
problem with weldings has increased uncertainty. EDF’s EPR projects in
Finland and at Hinkley Point, south-west England, are also running late and
over budget.
According to the parliamentary report, the NGO Greenpeace has,
over the last 30 years, “conducted 14 intrusion attempts in order to
demonstrate the vulnerability” of the French nuclear sites. The commission
put forward 33 suggestions to improve the situation – including reducing
reliance on subcontractors, putting more police on the ground at nuclear
sites, reconsidering waste disposal methods, being clearer on the timeline
for shutting down plants and strengthening the powers of the French nuclear
regulator, the ASN. https://www.ft.com/content/347980d2-8067-11e8-bc55-50daf11b720d
Les Echos 4th July 2018, EDF anticipates “a few months” of delay on the site of the nuclear reactor
Norman, because of the problems of welding announced in April. The weld
problems of the Flamanville EPR announced in April will have an “impact” on
the date of commissioning of the nuclear reactor under construction, said Wednesday EDF. Until then, the electrician only mentioned a possible
“additional” delay.
“What we do know is that there will be an impact on the
project schedule. On the other hand, it is much too early to characterize
it, “said Bertrand Michoud, the site’s development director, reviewing
welding problems at a local information committee gathering industrialists,
the safety authority. (ASN), local elected representatives, unions and
associations, next to Flamanville (Manche). “The order of magnitude is a
few months,”
Greenpeace activists say they have crashed a drone into a French nuclear site, posting footage of the flight on the groups Facebook page.
The group said the stunt was to highlight the lack of security around the facility, adding that “at no time was the drone intercepted or even worried about”.
The drone, which was decked out to resemble a tiny Superman, slammed into the tower in Bugey, about 30 kilometres from Lyon, according to the video released Tuesday.
The environmental activist group says the drone was harmless but showed the lack of security in nuclear installations in France, which is heavily dependent on atomic power.
“This action has once again demonstrated the extreme vulnerability of French nuclear installations, designed for the most part in the 1970s and unprepared for external attacks,” the post read.
France generates 75 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power in 19 nuclear plants operated by state-controlled EDF.
EDF said that two drones had flown over the Bugey site, of which one had been intercepted by French police.
“The presence of these drones had no impact on the security of the installations,” EDF said, adding that it will file a police complaint.
The drone stunt follows a series of staged break-ins by Greenpeace activists into French nuclear plants, which Greenpeace says are vulnerable to outside attack, especially the spent-fuel pools.
These pools can hold the equivalent of several reactor cores, stored in concrete pools outside the highly reinforced reactor building.
Greenpeace said the spent-fuel buildings were not designed to withstand outside attacks and were the most vulnerable part of French nuclear plants.
“Spent-fuel pools must be turned into bunkers in order to make nuclear plants safer,” Greenpeace France’s chief nuclear campaigner Yannick Rousselet said.
EDF said the spent-fuel pool buildings were robust and designed to withstand natural disasters and accidents.
Greenpeace’s security breaches have sparked a parliamentary investigation into nuclear security, which is due to present its report on Thursday.
In October, Greenpeace activists broke through two security barriers and launched fireworks over EDF’s Cattenom nuclear plant.
In February, a French court gave several Greenpeace activists suspended jail sentences while ordering the group to pay a fine and $78,900 in damages to EDF.
Greenpeace is notorious for attention-grabbing stunts, which have included climbing the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro and scaling Big Ben.
Greenpeace France 28th June 2018 The verdict of the trial of Privas, where Greenpeace France, one of his employees and 22 activists were judged on May 17 following an intrusion into the Cruas-Meysse nuclear power plant, fell. Despite EDF’s will to attack our activists, none of them have been sentenced to imprisonment.
Yannick Rousselet, a nuclear campaigner prosecuted for complicity, was released. EDF’s strategy to demand heavier prison sentences and colossal damages to Greenpeace to dissuade us from denouncing nuclear risk has failed.
The lawsuit against Greenpeace France, his campaign campaigner, Yannick Rousselet, and 22 activists of the organization was held May 17 at the tribunal de grande instance Privas in Ardeche. The verdict was made public six weeks later. https://www.greenpeace.fr/proces-nucleaire-privas-verdict/
France’s EDF, GE to co-build reactors for huge Indian nuclear plant, Reuters Staff, NEW DELHI (Reuters) 28 June 18- GE and French utility EDF have agreed to team to build six reactors for a nuclear power project in western India, which is due to be the world’s biggest when finished……… The six European Pressurised Water reactors will be for a 9,900 mw nuclear power project at Jaitapur, south of Mumbai in the state of Maharashtra, GE and EDF said in a joint statement released on Tuesday…….
EDF will be responsible for engineering integration of the entire project, while GE Power will design the critical part of the plant and supply its main components, the companies said.
GE will also provide operational support services and a training programme to meet the needs of the state-run Nuclear Power Corp. of India Ltd, the plant’s owner and operator.
Climate Action 26th June 2018 Europe’s first dedicated recycling plant for old solar panels has opened
in France. Veolia, an environmental services company, has opened the plant
in the town of Rousset, near Marseille, after securing a contract with
recycling organisation PV Cycle France.
The new deal means that Veolia will
recycle 1,300 tonnes of solar panels in 2018, which will increase to 4,000
tonnes by 2022, according to news agency Reuters. “This is the first
dedicated solar panel recycling plant in Europe, possibly in the world,”
said Gilles Carsuzaa, head of electronics recycling at Veolia.
According to
Veolia, solar capacity has grown by up to 40 percent a year in France,
equivalent to 84,000 tonnes of material in 2017 alone. The plant will now
ensure a single panel’s complex array of silver, silicon, glass, copper,
and plastics, and copper are dissembled and in working order to make new
solar panels. Solar panels have an estimated lifespan of 25 to 30 years,
meaning that many of the first generation built in the 1990s are now being
decommissioned. Veolia’s initial contract will recycle almost all of the
out-of-date solar panels in France this year. http://www.climateactionprogramme.org/news/solar-panel-recycling-plant-opens-in-france
EDF and VEOLIA Conclude a Partnership Agreement on Nuclear Plant Decommissioning and Radioactive Waste Processing, Business Wire June 26, 2018
“We are proud to have signed this agreement with VEOLIA, which underscores EDF’s determination to become a key player in decommissioning and radioactive waste management. This partnership is also tangible evidence of EDF and VEOLIA’s desire to pool their know-how in the interest of developing successful industrial sectors.”
On 26 June 2018, EDF and VEOLIA (Paris:VIE) entered a partnership agreement to co-develop remote control solutions for dismantling gas-cooled reactors (natural uranium graphite gas or UNGG in French) and for vitrifying radioactive waste, in France and worldwide.
EDF is currently decommissioning 6 gas-cooled reactors reactors at Bugey (Ain department in France), Chinon (Indre-et-Loire department) and Saint-Laurent-des-Eaux (Loir-et-Cher). Key milestones have already been secured on all these complex projects, and EDF confirms its objective to dismantle these nuclear facilities in the shortest timeframe possible. Veolia will thus provide EDF with its experience in remote handling technologies (robotics) with a view to designing and delivering innovative solutions to access the cores of gas-cooled reactors and to cut up and extract components under optimum safety and security conditions……..https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180626005932/en/EDF-VEOLIA-Conclude-Partnership-Agreement-Nuclear-Plant
Renews 22nd June 2018 Energy giant EDF is celebrating a UK double after cutting the ribbon on two
renewables projects this week. The company’s chairman and chief executive
Jean-Bernard Levy was present for the official opening of both the 41.5MW
Blyth offshore wind farm off the Northumberland coast and the 49MW West
Burton B battery storage facility.
The Blyth project (pictured) features
five MHI Vestas V164-8.0MW turbines optimised to 8.3MW. The West Burton B
facility will operate within the new frequency control system to be
deployed across the UK to improve national grid stability. Levy said:
“These two innovative projects demonstrate our expertise in renewable
energies and electricity storage. They contribute greatly to
decarbonisation of the energy mix in the UK, our second largest market
after France.” http://renews.biz/111572/edf-celebrates-uk-one-two/
Le Monde 21st June 2018 [Machine Translation]Nuclear: Hulot puts pressure on EDF. In an interview on Franceinfo, the Minister of the ecological and solidarity transition considered that the French group was in a “drift” because of its too much attachment to the nuclear power.
While France is in the middle of a discussion on its energetic roadmap, Nicolas Hulot did not mince his words, Thursday on Franceinfo . “One of the reasons why EDF is in trouble is that, in particular, the nuclear industry, sorry to say , takes us into a drift,” said the Minister of ecological transition and solidarity. Mr. Hulot has been criticizing nuclear power in good standing.
“It is clear that the cost of energy made with nuclear power is increasing because we have not
necessarily provisioned a number of things, at the same time that the cost of renewable energy is falling” stressed the minister. EDF’s financial situation remains difficult: the group suffers from low electricity prices on the market, losing tens of thousands of customers a month and has suffered from the shutdowns of many nuclear plants in recent years.
Contacted, the EDF group did not wish to react to the Minister’s statements. https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2018/06/21/nucleaire-hulot-met-la-pression-sur-edf_5318946_3234.html
Challenges 8th June 2018 [Machine Translation] EPR plant in Flamanville: does EDF really control its
construction site? While China has inaugurated its first EPR reactor,
delays are accumulating on the site of the EPR Flamanville in the Channel.
Defects noted at the end of March on strategic welds will further postpone
the opening of the plant “at least a few months” according to the Nuclear
Safety Authority.
In Flamanville, we are facing systemic failures. It is no
longer a matter of simple problems that add up to each other. It is in
these terms that Mycle Schneider, an independent Canadian expert and
co-author of an annual report on the nuclear industry, draws the alarming
report of the Flamanville shipyard. On May 31, EDF announced a delay of
several months in the construction of the EPR plant due to welding defects
on pipes. A new setback that will delay the commissioning of the plant. And
this is mainly due to a long series of problems since the launch of the
project in December 2007. https://www.challenges.fr/entreprise/centrale-epr-de-flamanville-edf-maitrise-t-elle-vraiment-son-chantier_592774
Romandie 7th June 2018,President of the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), Pierre-Franck Chevet, said
Thursday that EDF should repair the welding defects on the future EPR
Flamanville, a project that will represent “a minimum” few months of job.
“Already for the weld defects identified, it must be repaired.I feel that
on these defects detected – and I did not say it was the end of what we
would ask – nothing it must be a few months of work, “he said. “It is at
least a few months of work,” he added to members of the commission of
inquiry on the safety and security of nuclear facilities.
Defects had been detected at the end of March on welds of the piping of the reactor under
construction at Flamanville, whose start is officially scheduled for the
end of the year. They concern the pipes of the main secondary circuit,
which connect the steam generator and the turbine that produces the
electricity. By inspecting the work of its subcontractors, EDF realized
that the welds that had been declared compliant actually bore “quality
deviations”. The electrician has therefore launched additional controls.
“According to the indications, there are about 35% of welds that have
defects,” said Mr. Chevet.
“There are some for a few weeks … before. EDF
also explained last Thursday that it would take a few more weeks of
discussions with ASN to draw the conclusions of this dossier – and to have
a precise idea of the probable new delays and additional costs. Meanwhile,
the group had mentioned a possible delay of “a few months” from the start
of the nuclear reactor, potentially until the summer of 2019. The president
of the ASN also recalled that there was another problem concerning the weld
material quality, which had already been announced. https://www.romandie.com/news/925225.rom
nuclear-news 