Construction of flagship EPR unit in Normandy began in 2007 and it was initially planned for completion in 2012
France’s flagship nuclear power plant at Flamanville in Normandy has been connected to the national grid after a dozen years of delay, state nuclear operator EDF said.
The company said the 1,630 MW EPR plant was connected to the grid on 21 December at 11:48 local time and produced 100 MW of electricity.
EDF chairman and chief executive officer Luc Rémont said grid connection was “a historic event for the entire nuclear industry”.
He said: “I would like to salute all the teams who have met the challenges encountered during this project with the greatest tenacity, without ever compromising on safety.”
Flamanville-3 joins the three EPRs already in operation around the world, Taishan-1 and Taishan-2 in China and Olkiluoto-3 in Finland. There are also two EPR units under construction at Hinkley Point C in the UK’s southwestern county of Somerset.
The EPR is a Generation III+ pressurised water reactor design. It has been designed and developed mainly by Framatome, which was part of Areva between 2001 and 2017, and EDF in France, and by Siemens in Germany.
EDF said operation “will be marked by different power levels through to the summer of 2025” in a testing phase that will last a number of months.
“Following this test phase it is planned for the reactor to operate at 100 percent power until a first scheduled shutdown for maintenance and fuel reloading,” EDF said.
Background: Cost Overruns And Delays
Construction of Flamanville-3 started in 2007 and the plant had been initially expected to be completed in 2012. It was first started up in September following fuel loading in May.
The unit is about 12 years overdue and the expected final construction costs of the unit have already risen from an initial estimate of €3.3bn ($3.6bn) to over €13.2bn.
Multiple factors have contributed to the delays and cost overruns at Flamanville-3.
In 2022, further work was needed following repairs on welds that proved to be more complicated than expected. EDF said at the time the delay was mainly due to additional studies needed to establish a new process for the stress-relieving heat treatment of some welds that have been upgraded in the last two years.
When EDF first flagged the welds issue in 2018, fuel loading was set to start at the end of 2019 with final construction costs pegged at €10.9bn.
Components for the complex design had to be retooled, some after complaints from ASN. EDF was also criticised by the French government for how it struggled to coordinate the project that involved hundreds of suppliers.
A French report into the project in 2019 noted that several elements of the project’s construction had begun before the completion of the reactor’s design, leading to certain sections of the work having to be demolished and rebuilt.
France’s Ambitious Nuclear Plans
Flamanville-3 will become France’s 57th commercial nuclear power plant and its most powerful in terms of capacity. Its share of generation from its existing fleet of 56 nuclear plants is about 62% – the highest in the world.
France has ambitious plans for new nuclear power plants Earlier this year with EDF aiming to begin preparatory works for a new EPR2 nuclear plant at the existing Penly nuclear site in northern France.
In July 2023, EDF filed an application to build the first pair of its new-generation EPR2 plants at Penly, part of a 2022 programme by president Emmanuel Macron for a “rebirth” of France’s nuclear industry with the possible construction of 14 EPR2 units and operating extensions for older nuclear plants from 40 years to 50 years or more.
File photo of construction at the Flamanville-3 site in Normandy, northern France. Courtesy EDF.
