Once the paragon of nuclear power, the French program is exhibiting the same blind staggers that characterized the U.S. in the late 1970s and the 1980s.
In no particular order:
* The Flamanville 3 advanced pressurized water reactor (EPR), designed and partially constructed by France’s AREVA and now under Electricity de France management and construction (all of these companies are government-controlled and essentially owned), is a disaster. So, too, is the first iteration of the so-called “advanced” AREVA reactor design in Finland’s troubled Olkiluoto 3 project.
Flamanville 3 is now running a decade behind schedule and four times over budget. The constructors are wrestling with eight bad, and safety-significant, welds at what appears to be an out-of-control project. The 1,650-MW unit began construction in December 2007, with a completion date set for 2012, an optimistic 54-month schedule. The original cost estimate was $3.6 billion, and the latest is close to $15 billion, with an optimistic completion date of late next year.
* France announced in September that it was scrapping its ambitious fast-breeder reactor project, Astrid (Advanced Sodium Technological Reactor for Industrial Development). The government had spent about $1 billion on the project, but clobbered it because said the government’s Commissionariat a l’energie (CEA), of the “current energy market situation.”
Nuclear expert and blogger Dan Yurman wrote in September, “The French may be right about time frame for commercial prospects of some types of advanced reactors given low price of natural gas and development of hybrid systems of gas plants and renewables being far less capital & time intensive than advanced nuclear tech. Whether these constraints will apply to sodium cooled reactors remains a question.”
The failure of the Astrid program, Yurman noted, killed a joint development project for advanced sodium-cooled fast reactors with Japan. Japan junked its advanced Monju fast breeder prototype project in 2016 in order to team up with the French.
* As Reuters reported, the French government has given EdF, the state-owned national electric monopoly, “a month to outline how it plans to tackle skills shortages and other problems which ministers say have delayed nuclear projects and damaged the reputation of a key industry for the country.”
A state audit of the Flamanville fiasco, said the news service, “points to bigger problems for France’s nuclear industry as a whole…. The report highlights planning deficiencies and a lack of direction at Flamanville in the early stages of the project, as well as poor coordination with suppliers, but also says France has lost industrial expertise in the sector.”
Finance minister Bruno Le Maire said that Flamanville is “a failure for France’s entire electricity and nuclear sector.”
* Le Mond reported that EdF estimates it will cost at least $55.6 billion to build six of its EPR reactors if the government agrees to build them. The estimate is $8.3 to $8.6 billion per unit, if built in pairs, with 20-year financing. Based on the Flamanville experience, those estimates are likely to be low.
In the words of seminal American philosopher and New York Yankees legendary catcher Yogi Berra, it’s “déjà vu all over again.”
— Kennedy Maize