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EDF, government confirm delay to new reactor design schedule
(Montel) EDF has delayed delivery of a blueprint for the series of new reactors it plans to build in France until the summer, the state-owned power company and a government official said on Tuesday, confirming a newspaper report.
Reporting by: Muriel Boselli
The firm was due to have submitted the design for the new EPR2 reactors to France's ASN nuclear safety authority by the end of last year.
Confirming the delay, Paul de Lapeyriere, head of public affairs for an inter-ministerial delegation for new nuclear reactors, said there was "no conclusion to be drawn" on the overall schedule for building new reactors "at this stage".
France wants to build new nuclear power reactors to meet an expected growth in power demand in coming decades and replace its oldest nuclear reactors. The average age of the country's 56 reactors is over 37 years.
EDF aims to build six and possibly eight new reactors by 2050, with construction due to start at the Penly nuclear power plant on the Channel coast by 2027. The target is to commission a new reactor every 18 months for the first six reactors, then every 12 months for the others.
Yet the firm still had to "finalise the basic design" and complete engineering work, particularly on the nuclear buildings, before starting work on the detailed reactor design, Joel Barre, the government official overseeing the new reactor build, told French daily Les Echos.
"We will enter the detailed design phase in the summer," an EDF spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, the utility was due to announce later this year its new estimate for the cost of building the reactors, said Lapeyriere.
EDF initially pegged the build at EUR 52bn, but the new estimate would take into account "enormous" inflation and a sharp rise in the cost of raw materials, Xavier Ursat, head of new nuclear at EDF, said earlier this month.
Following the setbacks at the EPRs in Finland, France and the UK, where staggering cost overruns and delays have piled up, EDF's engineers are working on what they say is a new, simpler and cheaper design for its nuclear revival programme.
Additional reporting by Elise Wu