the Flamanville EPR is experiencing new delays and will not be able to start until 2022
The Nuclear Safety Authority asks EDF to take eight welds located in hard-to-reach places. The reactor will not be able to start, at best, until the end of 2022.
Will the Calvary of Flamanville end one day? The Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) announced Thursday (June 20th) that Electricité de France (EDF) should carry out new work on the EPR reactor (European pressurized water reactor) in Flamanville, Manche. This decision will cause further delays for this site, which continues to accumulate disappointments. Started in 2007, it was to end in 2012 and cost 3.5 billion euros. With this new delay, it should not be able to start before the end of 2022 at best, and the cost of 11 billion euros should still be revised upwards.
This time around: eight welds passing through the concrete enclosure of the reactor and ASN asked EDF to resume. EDF CEO Jean-Bernard Lévy, who was reappointed to head the group by Emmanuel Macron in May, was expecting this decision. The public group did not provide details of the delay and the additional costs caused by this decision, but " will, in the coming weeks, make a precise point on the continuation of the project ".
These quality differences were discovered in February and April 2018, on secondary circuit welds discharging steam to the turbine. Some are found to be non-compliant with the "high quality" standard – excluding the possibility of breakage – chosen by EDF. Others do not even respect the standard regulations.
Bad news for French nuclear
EDF then undertakes to recover 58 welds, but asks ASN to keep eight others as they are. And for good reason: these welds pass through the containment of the reactor and take them back completely involves modifying the structures of the installation.
The group of experts gathered on the issue in April by the nuclear policeman had stressed "The nature and the particularly large number of deviations in the design and manufacture of these welds". EDF asked ASN for permission to repair these welds only in 2024, after the start of the reactor. In a letter sent to ASN, the public group states that a repair before commissioning would postpone it at the earliest at the end of 2022.
"ASN's position is fraught with consequences, but at no time does it call into question the design of the EPR or the indisputable progress made in terms of the safety of this reactor", ensures World Bernard Doroszczuk, president of the nuclear gendarme.
However, this decision could shake EDF, first operator of nuclear reactors in the world. The Group CEO will present to the Board of Directors by the end of June the possible options for the site. The preferred choice would be that of a repair that allows a start at the end of 2022 or early 2023. But Jean-Bernard Lévy should be forced to address for the first time a stoppage of the project, while the yard – out the eight welds in question – is almost complete. Such abandonment would signify the end of the development of the EPR and would be a painful failure for the electrician.
This is also very bad news for the whole of the French nuclear industry: Emmanuel Macron asked the public group to present to him in mid-2021 a complete project for the construction of new reactors in France. This date was precisely set for this launch to be carried out after the start of the Flamanville EPR. "Wisdom recommends waiting for the Flamanville EPR to be completed before making decisions"explained a year ago the Minister of Economy, Bruno Mayor. In fact, the decision of the nuclear policeman rejects any plans to build a new reactor in the post-presidential election of 2022.
Possible delay in closing coal plants
This decision could also have another consequence: to delay the closure of the French coal plants, which must cease their activity in 2022. The Assembly is discussing at the moment the timetable for these closures under the Energy and Climate Law.
"We had anticipated potentially pessimistic scenarios and we are staying the course of closing our four coal plants by the end of the five-year period and one of the Fessenheim reactors in 2020"assured the Secretary of State for the ecological transition, Brune Poirson, at the microphone of Radio Classique.
The Transmission Network (RTE) has however repeatedly stressed that any delay in Flamanville would make it difficult to close the power plant Cordemais (Loire-Atlantique) in the planned schedule.
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