It was time. Twelve years after the date initially planned, the production of electricity from the Finnish EPR Olkiluoto-3, this third-generation nuclear reactor built by the Areva-Siemens consortium, finally started this Saturday.
« Today Saturday March 12, 2022 at 10:00 GMT, the reactor was connected to the national grid at a level of 103 MW “, thus announced the operator TVO in a press release.
With an installed power of 1,650 megawatts (MW), this EPR should thus become one of the most powerful reactors in Europe. However, it will not reach normal operation until July, and will then supply Finland with no less than 14% of its electricity, supplementing the nuclear production of the country’s two other power plants already in service, at Olkiluoto and Loviisa, on the west coast of the country. These installations already produce about 30% of the national electricity.
Everywhere, EPRs are lagging behind
For the Olkiluoto-3 site, which began in 2004, we had to be patient. Because in Finland, as elsewhere, the construction of EPRs has been marked by numerous schedule shifts and financial slippages. The only one under construction in France, in Flamanville (Manche), has also recently seen its start-up postponed once again to 2023, i.e. a delay of eleven years, with a budget multiplied by almost four (from 3.3 to 12.7 billion euros excluding financing costs).
As for the Hinkley Point EPR in the south of England, the start of electricity production has been postponed to six months, and is now scheduled for mid-2026.
Finally, to Taishan (China), one of the only EPRs commissioned in the world, has been shut down since July due to a technical incident.
Tensions between TVO, Areva and the Stuk
Of Franco-German origin, these reactors purchased in Europe after the Chernobyl disaster were nevertheless to become the spearhead of the atomic sector, and re-energize a sector in decline. In fact, these offer greater power and better security than the second-generation installations, which make up the current fleet. But between welding defects, anomalies in the composition of the steel of the cover and the bottom of the tank and problems with suppliers, the image of the EPR has gradually been tarnished.
In the case of Olkiluoto, these disappointments even led to long and intense tensions between TVO, Areva and the Finnish nuclear authority, Stuk. TVO had signed an agreement in March 2019 to end the litigation, providing for compensation of 450 million euros to be paid to it. The Covid-19 had in turn caused further delays on the Finnish site.
A comeback of the civilian atom
Nevertheless, if the problems of the EPR and then the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011, have dampened hopes of a “renaissance”, nuclear energy, which emits little CO2, sees its prospects improve again. Sign of a more favorable situation, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) this year raised its projections for the first time since Fukushima, now forecasting a doubling of nuclear power installed by 2050 in the scenario the most favorable.
For its part, Brussels has granted the civil atom the “green label”, to allow its operators to benefit from financing conditions as favorable as those granted to develop renewable energies, even if the conditions are numerous.
Finally, in France, Emmanuel Macron recently announced his intention to build no less than 14 EPRs on national soil, eight of which are optional over the longer term, in order to ensure the renewal of the electricity mix by 2050. Something to give visibility to the sector, which has been waiting for this new impetus for a long time.