Part 2 of 3 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     Following its submission of a new techno-commercial offer to India, EDF’s Ramany said that the company is moving ahead with the “the concretization of the largest nuclear power plant in the world [with the] fully proven EPR technology.”
     In spite of EDF’s hope that the reactors would shortly become operations, negotiations with NPCIL have stalled over the past decade for several reasons. These include increasing cost estimates, increasing doubts over their performance, disagreement of liability in the case of a reactor accident, and local protests. EPR projects under construction and in operation have encountered problems in different parts of the world.
     The first EPR project was named Olkiluoto-3. It started in Finland in 2003 and was connected to the Finnish grid in 2022. It was completed thirteen years behind schedule and has not yet begun operations. There are two EPRs under construction in the U.K. These are known as Hinkley Point C-1 and C-2. There is also a French EPR named Flamanville-3 under construction. The proposed two-unit EPR plant at Hinkley Point was originally scheduled to begin operations in 2025 but it has been delayed until June of 2027. It will cost three and a half billion dollars more than was originally proposed. The current estimation is that it will cost twenty-nine and half billion dollars. The Flamanville EPR is over a decade behind schedule. Its budget has expanded from three billion three hundred million dollars to twelve billion seven hundred million dollars.
     Suvrat Raju and MV Ramana are India physicists. The have questioned the safety and economics of the EPR reactors proposed for the Jaitapur site. In 2013, they estimated that the cost of electricity from the proposed reactors at Jaitapur would cost eighteen cents per kilowatt hour. Their calculations were based on the construction costs of the EPRs in Finland and France. Since then, the costs of EPR construction have increased while the cost of alternatives has declined sharply.
      In an interview, Ramana said, “The costs of the EPRs being built in Western Europe have gone up, while costs of renewable sources of energy, especially solar photovoltaics, have declined. In 2020, one solar project developer offered to sell electricity at the especially low rate of two and a half cents. It is routine to find projects proposed for around 3 cents per kWh.”
     It is significant that the total amount the India government will spend on this project has still not been made public. In 2019, the EDF announced that the cost is “confidential and may not be disclosed.” EDF has also refused to release an estimate of the cost per kilowatt hour.
     EPRs’ problems are not limited to massive cost overruns and significant delays. Raju and Ramana wrote in 2019 that “In addition to the high costs, safety problems with the reactor design and construction have emerged in several EPRs.” Serious problems occurred during the manufacture of the reactor pressure vessel of the EPR at Flamanville in France. The steel in parts of the vessel was found to have too much carbon. (Too much carbon concentration in the steel of the reactor vessel can lead to lower than expected mechanical properties. This could compromise its safety. The reactor vessel acts as a key barrier against radioactive materials escaping from the core.)
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