New French nuclear reactor enters automatic shutdown

France’s latest nuclear reactor, affected by huge delays and price overruns, shut itself down mechanically Wednesday only a day after beginning up for the primary time.

The European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) in Flamanville, Normandy goes by means of a “lengthy and complicated startup course of requiring many trials and assessments, and that may induce shutdowns like this,” a spokeswoman for state-owned vitality large EDF instructed AFP.

The shutdown “proves the safety system is working properly,” she added, saying that employees had been now “doing the necessary technical checks and analysis… then they will restart the reactor”.

EDF’s newest reactor, alleged to be the mannequin for a brand new era of energy vegetation pushed by President Emmanuel Macron for the approaching a long time, has been accomplished 12 years late at a price of 13.2 billion euros ($14.6 billion)—round 4 instances the three.3 billion initially budgeted.

Reactors of the identical design have beforehand been accomplished in China and Finland.

“On the Finnish EPR, there were several setbacks, especially with some hydraulic pumps that were faulty and had to be replaced,” stated Nicolas Goldberg, an vitality professional at Colombus Consulting.

“This doesn’t call the startup into question. We’ll just have to be patient,” he added.

EDF had on Monday secured approval to start the fission response from France’s ASN nuclear security authority, having loaded uranium gas into the reactor in Could and carried out a battery of assessments.

The Flamanville plant will regularly ramp as much as 25 % output earlier than being related to the grid “by the end of autumn”, the ability firm says—an additional delay from its earlier goal of the top of summer time.

At full power will probably be France’s top-producing nuclear reactor at 1,600 megawatts, sufficient to produce round three million houses with electrical energy.

© 2024 AFP