France is starting up its first newly built nuclear reactor in a quarter of a century. The project is twelve years behind schedule and has suffered multiple setbacks. France is still looking to a nuclear revival with plans for more new plants.
EDF is the French state-owned operator of Europe’s biggest fleet of nuclear power stations. EDF said late on Monday that the first chain reactions at the Flamanville 3 reactor on France’s Normandy coast were due to get under way overnight.
If these tests are successful, the reactor will eventually be connected to the grid before the end of the year. This will happen once it has reached twenty five percent of its total one billion six hundred and fifty megawatts capacity.
The reactor is France’s fifty seventh and a prototype of models that EDF wants to develop at home and overseas. It has come to epitomize the reversals the nuclear industry was suffering globally in the wake of a downturn in orders over recent decades. This has prompted skilled workers to leave the nuclear sector.
Flamanville ended up costing more than four times its initial budget at fourteen billion dollars. It took longer to finish than similar models that EDF built in China and Finland that were also hit by major delays.
Components for the complex reactor design had to be retooled, some after complaints from safety regulators. EDF was also criticized by the French government for how much it had struggled to co-ordinate a project that involved hundreds of suppliers.
Régis Clement is the co-head of EDF’s nuclear production division. He explained that the launch is “… a historic step in this project. Our teams are on the starting blocks.”
EDF has contracts to build new reactors in Britain and is tendering to export its design elsewhere. It said that it had learned valuable lessons from Flamanville 3 that will allow it to reduce construction times in future. However, it still faces a series of hurdles at home despite French President Emmanuel Macron launching a plan to build at least six new reactors.
The orders have yet to be formalized. A political impasse in Paris may only delay the process further, after legislative elections this summer delivered a hung parliament. EDF is spending money filling thousands of new positions to prepare for the orders. It needs to agree on a funding plan for the projects, which could cost over fifty-seven billion dollars.
Several people close to the company said hopes of reaching a deal by the end of the year are fading. An initial ambition to deliver the new reactors by 2037 seems overly optimistic as a result. Other challenges include improving design updates for the future reactors and training a range of staff from engineers to welders. EDF also faces competition overseas from other players amid a worldwide revival of nuclear technology.
Nuclear power is valued for its low carbon emissions. However, it has faced an atmosphere of distrust after the Chernobyl accident of 1986 and the Fukushima meltdown in Japan following a tsunami in 2011.