Flamanville Nuclear Power Plant | |
---|---|
Official name | Centrale Nucléaire de Flamanville |
Country | France |
Location | Flamanville, Manche, Normandy |
Coordinates | 49°32′11″N1°52′54″W / 49.53639°N 1.88167°W |
Status | Units 1-2: Operational Unit 3: Under construction |
Construction began | Unit 1: 1 December 1979 Unit 2: 1 May 1980 Unit 3: 3 December 2007 |
Commission date | Unit 1: 1 December 1986 Unit 2: 9 March 1987 Unit 3: 2024 (scheduled) |
Owner | EDF |
Operator | EDF |
Nuclear power station | |
Reactor type | PWR |
Reactor supplier | Framatome |
Cooling source | English Channel |
Thermal capacity | 2 × 3817 MWth |
Power generation | |
Units operational | 2 × 1330 MW |
Make and model | Units 1–2: P4 REP 1300 Unit 3: EPR |
Units under const. | 1 × 1600 MW EPR |
Nameplate capacity | 2660 MW |
Capacity factor | 60.08% (2017) 70.55% (lifetime) |
Annual net output | 13,999 GWh (2017) |
External links | |
Website | Centrale nucléaire de Flamanville |
Commons | Related media on Commons |
The Flamanville Nuclear Power Plant is located at Flamanville, Manche, France on the Cotentin Peninsula. The power plant houses two pressurized water reactors (PWRs) that produce 1.3 GWe each and came into service in 1986 and 1987, respectively. It produced 18.9 TWh in 2005, which amounted to 4% of the electricity production in France. In 2006 this figure was about 3.3%. At the time, there were 671 workers regularly working at the plant.
A third reactor at the site, an EPR unit, began construction in 2007 with its commercial introduction scheduled for 2012. As of 2020 [update] the project was more than five times over budget and years behind schedule. Various safety problems have been raised, including weakness in the steel used in the reactor. [1] In July 2019, further delays were announced, pushing back the commercial introduction date to the end of 2022. [2] [3] In January 2022, more delays were announced, with fuel loading continuing until mid-2023, [4] [5] and again in December 2022, delaying fuel loading to early 2024. [6] Fuel loading was completed in May 2024 [7] and the launch of the reactor was declared "imminent" in late July 2024, [8] eventually starting up in early September 2024. [9] The EPR was connected to the grid at 11:48 AM on 21 December 2024. [10]
Construction on a new reactor, Flamanville 3, began on 4 December 2007. [11] The new unit is an Areva European Pressurized Reactor type and is planned to have a nameplate capacity of 1,650 MWe. EDF estimated the cost at €3.3 billion [11] and stated it would start commercial operations in 2012, after construction lasting 54 months. [12] The latest cost estimate (July 2020) is at €19.1 billion, with commissioning planned tentatively at the end of 2022. [13] [2]
On 3 December 2012, EDF announced that the estimated costs have escalated to €8.5 billion ($11 billion), and the completion of construction was being delayed to 2016. [14] The next day the Italian power company Enel announced it was relinquishing its 12.5% stake in the project, and five future EPRs. They would be reimbursed for their project stake of €613 million plus interest. [15] [16]
In November 2014, EDF announced that completion of construction was delayed to 2017 due to delays in component delivery by Areva. [17]
In April 2015, Areva informed the French nuclear regulator, Autorité de sûreté nucléaire (ASN), that anomalies had been detected in the reactor vessel steel, causing "lower than expected mechanical toughness values". [18] [19] Segolene Royal, Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy in the Second Valls Government, asked the producer for further details and possible consequences. [20]
Various safety problems have been raised, including weakness in the steel used in the reactor [21] together with heterogeneity of the steel alloy forged high integrity components used in the reactor pressure vessel, [22] that have also been shown to be present in Japanese-sourced components that have entered the French nuclear equipment supply chain. [23] [24] The safety of the Flamanville EPR plant has also been questioned due to the danger of flooding of the kind experienced during the 1999 Blayais Nuclear Power Plant flood. [25] In June 2015 multiple faults in cooling system safety valves were discovered by ASN. [26]
In September 2015, EDF announced that the estimated costs had escalated to €10.5 billion, and the start-up of the reactor was delayed to the fourth quarter of 2018. [27] The delays of Unit 3 of Flamanville received additional attention when in December 2016 The Economist reported that the British loan guarantees for Hinkley Point C require Unit 3 to be operational by 2020, that the regulator will rule on the future of Unit 3 mid-2017 and that one possible outcome of this ruling can delay its opening far beyond 2018, thus jeopardizing the British loan guarantees thereby preventing EDF from building the EPRs at Hinkley Point. [28]
In February 2017, renewed delays in the construction of the EPR-reactors at Taishan Nuclear Power Plant prompted EDF to state that Flamanville 3 remains on schedule to start operations by the end of 2018, assuming it receives regulator approval. [29] In June 2017, the French regulator issued a provisional ruling that Flamanville 3 is safe to start. [30]
In January 2018, cold functional tests were completed. [31] In February, EDF found that some secondary cooling circuit welds did not meet specifications, causing EDF to carry out further checks and issue a report. Following this, ASN requested EDF to extend the welding checks to other systems. Hot functional tests had to be postponed. [32]
In July 2018, EDF further delayed fuel loading to Q4 2019 and increased the project's cost estimate by a further €400 million ($467.1 million USD). [33] The latest project cost estimates by EDF amounted to €10.9 billion ($12.75 billion USD), three times the original cost estimates. Hot testing was pushed back to the end of 2018. [34] In January 2019, a further one-month delay in hot testing was announced. [35]
In June 2019, the regulator ASN determined that eight welds in steam transfer pipes passing through the two-wall containment, that EDF had hoped to repair after startup, must be repaired before the reactor is commissioned. [36] On 29 June 2019, it was announced that the start-up was once again being pushed back, making it unlikely it could be started before the end of 2022. [2] It is estimated the repairs will add €1.5 billion to the costs, bringing the total to €12.4 billion. [3] Further cost increases due to additional time needed to repair 110 defective welds have increased the cost to €12.7 billion. [4] [5]
In July 2020, the French Court of Audit finalised an eighteen-month in-depth analysis of the project, concluding that the total estimated cost reaches up to €19.1 billion. The severe delays incurred additional financing costs, as well as added taxes and levies. In a response, EDF did not dispute the findings of the court. [13] In the same month, France's energy minister Barbara Pompili noted the high costs and delays, calling the project "a mess". [37]
In December 2022, EDF announced a further delay of at least six months with an estimated cost increase of €500 million due to more work to establish a new process for the stress relieving heat treatment of some welds close to sensitive equipment. Estimated total costs increased to €13.2 billion. [6] Fuel loading started on 8 May 2024 and has been completed on 22 May 2024. [38] [39]
On 3 September 2024, the reactor started test operation, but the following day it shut down automatically, possibly due to a configuration error. [40] The reactor suffered a second automatic shutdown on September 17. [41]
On 21 Dec 2024, the reactor was connected to the national grid, initially producing 100 MW of power. [42]
On 9 February 2017 a mechanical problem with a fan in the turbine hall of unit 1 caused an explosion and fire, causing five people to be treated for smoke inhalation. While the non-nuclear accident did not cause any radioactive leak, it did cause the number one reactor to be disconnected from the power grid. [43] [44] EDF initially estimated the reactor would be operational within a week, but later estimated the end of March. [45]
Units 1 and 2 were under enhanced surveillance by regulator Autorité de sûreté nucléaire (ASN) from 2019 to 2022 because of shortcomings in some operating activities, a high number of maintenance faults, poor mastery of certain maintenance operations, and inadequate quality of the ten-year inspection documentation of unit 1. This involved about 30 ASN inspections a year. [46]
Areva S.A. was a French multinational group specializing in nuclear power, active between 2001 and 2018. It was headquartered in Courbevoie, France. Before its 2016 corporate restructuring, Areva was majority-owned by the French state through the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (54.37%), Banque publique d'investissement (3.32%), and Agence des participations de l'État (28.83%). Électricité de France, in which the French government has a majority ownership stake, owned 2.24%; Kuwait Investment Authority owned 4.82% as the second largest shareholder after the French state.
Électricité de France SA, commonly known as EDF, is a French multinational electric utility company owned by the government of France. Headquartered in Paris, with €139.7 billion in sales in 2023, EDF operates a diverse portfolio of at least 120 gigawatts of generation capacity in Europe, South America, North America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. In 2009, EDF was the world's largest producer of electricity. Its 56 active nuclear reactors in France are spread out over 18 sites. They comprise 32 reactors of 900 MWe, 20 reactors of 1,300 MWe, and 4 reactors of 1,450 MWe, all PWRs.
The EPR is a Generation III+ pressurised water reactor design. It has been designed and developed mainly by Framatome and Électricité de France (EDF) in France, and by Siemens in Germany. In Europe this reactor design was called European Pressurised Reactor, and the internationalised name was Evolutionary Power Reactor, but is now simply named EPR.
The Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant is one of Finland's two nuclear power plants, the other being the two-unit Loviisa Nuclear Power Plant. The plant is owned and operated by Teollisuuden Voima (TVO), and is located on Olkiluoto Island, on the shore of the Gulf of Bothnia, in the municipality of Eurajoki in western Finland, about 20 kilometres (12 mi) from the town of Rauma and about 50 kilometres (31 mi) from the city of Pori.
Framatome is a French nuclear reactor business. It is owned by Électricité de France (EDF) (80.5%) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (19.5%).
Since the mid-1980s, the largest source of electricity in France has been nuclear power, with a generation of 379.5 TWh in 2019 and a total electricity production of 537.7 TWh. In 2018, the nuclear share was 71.67%, the highest percentage in the world.
The Tricastin Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear power plant consisting of 4 pressurized water reactors (PWRs) of CP1 type with 915 MW electrical power output each. The power plant is located in the south of France at the Canal de Donzère-Mondragon near the Donzère-Mondragon Dam and the commune Pierrelatte.
The Penly Nuclear power station is found some 6 miles (10 km) northeast of Dieppe. It lies on the border of two French municipalities: Penly and Saint-Martin-en-Campagne in the département of Seine-Maritime, Normandy, on the English Channel coast. It employs France's only working funicular railway in industrial use.
The Paluel Nuclear Power Plant lies within the French town Paluel in Normandy in the Département Seine-Maritime. The nuclear power plant, which consists of four 1330 MWe class pressurized water reactors, is about 40 kilometers far away from the city of Dieppe and employs approx. 1,250 full-time workers. The operator is the French company EDF. Water from the English Channel is used for cooling.
The Chooz Nuclear Power Station lies in the municipality of Chooz in the Ardennes department, France, on the Meuse River in a panhandle protruding into Belgium, between the French city of Charleville-Mézières and the Belgian municipality of Dinant, near the comune of Givet.
Atmea was a joint venture between Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and EDF Group set up in 2006 to develop, market, license and sell the ATMEA1 reactor, a new generation III+, medium-power pressurized water reactor (PWR). The company was headquartered in Paris. The joint venture was abandoned in 2019.
Nuclear power in the European Union accounted for approximately 26% of total electricity production in 2019 and nearly half of low-carbon energy production across the EU.
In the 1970s, an anti-nuclear movement in France, consisting of citizens' groups and political action committees, emerged. Between 1975 and 1977, some 175,000 people protested against nuclear power in ten demonstrations.
Hinkley Point C nuclear power station (HPC) is a two-unit, 3,200 MWe EPR nuclear power station under construction in Somerset, England.
The Bell Bend Nuclear Power Plant was a proposed nuclear power plant, which would have been built on the Bell Bend of the Susquehanna River in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania adjacent to the Susquehanna Steam Electric Station.
The Belleville Nuclear Power Plant is located in Belleville-sur-Loire (Cher) near Léré, along the river Loire between Nevers and Orléans. It employs approximately 620 people and consists of two large 1,300 MW P4 nuclear reactors. Its cooling water comes from the Loire River.
The Taishan Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear power plant in Taishan, Guangdong province, China. The plant features two operational EPR reactors. The first unit, Taishan 1, entered commercial service in December 2018, but was shut down from July 2021 to August 2022 to investigate and fix issues with fuel rod cladding. The second unit, Taishan 2, entered commercial service in September 2019. Delays at other EPR construction sites in Finland and France meant that Taishan was the first nuclear power plant to have an operational EPR.
The electricity sector in France is dominated by its nuclear power, which accounted for 71.7% of total production in 2018, while renewables and fossil fuels accounted for 21.3% and 7.1%, respectively. France has the largest share of nuclear electricity in the world, and together with renewable energy supplies, this has helped its grid achieve very low carbon intensity.
The Autorité de sûreté nucléaire is an independent French administrative authority set up by law 2006-686 of 13 June 2006 concerning nuclear transparency and security. It has replaced the General Direction for Nuclear Safety and Radioprotection. Its task, on behalf of the State, is to regulate nuclear safety and radiation protection in order to protect workers, patients, the public and the environment from the risks involved in nuclear activities. It also contributes to informing the citizens.
The history of France's civil nuclear program traces the evolution that led France to become the world's second largest producer of nuclear-generated electricity by the end of the 20th century, based on units deployed, installed capacity, and total production. Since the 1990s, nuclear energy has furnished three-fourths of France's electricity; by 2018, this portion had reached 71.7%.