Nuclear energy is considered to be potentially risky for its opponents and climate-friendly to its advocates. In any case, it is expensive. Recently, the French energy company Electricité de France (EDF) had to admit that the construction of a pressurized water reactor in Flamanville in northern France will cost another 1.5 billion euros more than originally planned. Reason are holey welds.
The total cost of the EPR project under construction there is estimated at € 12.4 billion - almost four times as much as estimated. He should not be able to go online until the end of 2022 at the earliest. That would be ten years after the original plan.
However, this does not seem to detract from the French Government's confidence in nuclear power in general and the EPR in particular. The French newspaper "Le Monde" reported Monday on a letter that Environment Minister Elisabeth Borne and Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire wrote to EDF Chief Executive Jean-Bernard Lévy. According to the newspaper, this refers to the construction of a total of six EPRs, which are to be erected in pairs at three locations in the country. The new buildings should be built over a period of 15 years.
"Bankruptcies, bad luck and mishaps"
The first criticism of the plans, there are already: "Despite ever more expensive bankruptcies, bad luck and mishaps at the new nuclear power plant on the English Channel, the new building six more such problem heaters preference," complains the Green Party politician Sylvia Kotting-Uhl, chairman of the Environment Committee in the Bundestag in conversation with the MIRROR. The federal government must immediately start talks with France "to do something about this dangerous madness".
Officially, President Emmanuel Macron has only asked the EDF leadership to present by mid-2021 documents on how to proceed with nuclear power in France in the future. Currently, about 72 percent of French electricity is generated by nuclear power plants.
For a long time, the EPR was considered the hope of the European nuclear industry. The German Siemens Group was also involved in its development, but has nothing to do with the project. The technology is offered today by the French company Framatome. So far only two EPR blocks are operating in the Chinese Taishan. Other facilities are being built in Finland and the UK. Here, too, at the kiln Hinkley Point C, the costs had risen by about three billion euros compared to the original plan.
