As we said yesterday, EDF have confirmed that the construction of their EPR reactor in Flamanville, France will cost 20 per cent more than planned.

The spin as to why costs have risen is, we have to say, mighty:

The updated construction cost of the EPR being built in Flamanville came out at €4bn in 2008 euros, (+20% higher than the previous estimated cost of €3.3bn in 2005 euros). This update takes into account increase in prices and the effects of some contractual indexes due to higher raw material costs and the impact of technical and regulatory evolutions.

The ‘impact of technical and regulatory evolutions’? What does that mean, you may be asking. It sounds like deliberately obfuscating language doesn’t it? Allow us to translate. What EDF are saying here is that costs have had to rise because they themselves did not pay enough attention to the required standards of quality and safety.

Just take a look. From the outset there were problems with supervision and quality control. The initial blasting to prepare the site had problems. The reinforcing of concrete was not done properly. Cracks were found in the reactor’s foundations. In April this year the French nuclear watchdog ASN announced that a quarter of the welding they had inspected in the reactor’s steel liner was defective. Construction work was halted for a month. The list goes on and on.

EDF sacrificed quality and safety standards in favour of keeping to the construction schedule. Ironically, those short cuts only led to more delays and cost overruns.