As we’ve discussed before, there are two questions asked about building a nuclear reactor – ‘How much will it cost?’ and ‘When will it be operational?’- to which there is only one, honest reply: ‘I’ll tell you when it’s finished.’

This week, however, lumbering French nuclear ogre AREVA added a third question to the list: ‘What will the design look like?’…

In an unprecedented step, the UK nuclear safety regulator (HSE’s ND), the French nuclear regulator (ASN), and the Finnish nuclear regulator (STUK) released a joint statement on their respective evaluations of the design of AREVA’s shiny all-singing, all-dancing state-of-the-art third generation EPR Pressurised Water Reactor. You see, all three have discovered the same problem with the reactor’s design…

The issue is primarily around ensuring the adequacy of the safety systems (those used to maintain control of the plant if it goes outside normal conditions), and their independence from the control systems (those used to operate the plant under normal conditions).

Independence is important because, if a safety system provides protection against the failure of a control system, then they should not fail together. The EPR design, as originally proposed by the licensees and the manufacturer, AREVA, doesn’t comply with the independence principle, as there is a very high degree of complex interconnectivity between the control and safety systems.

In short: the EPR’s safety system isn’t independent from its control system. The safety system is there, in case the control system fails, to prevent catastrophic accidents. In EPR’s case, if the control system fails, the currently non-independent safety system could fail as well. And AREVA wants to sell the EPR all over the world.

Needless to say, AREVA responded with an awesome piece of denial, spin and downright fantasy…

The safety of the EPR™ reactor has not been called into question…

Really? So clearly ‘The issue is primarily around ensuring the adequacy of the safety systems’ and ‘The EPR design… doesn’t comply with the independence principle’ actually means ‘there’s nothing to worry about’. Silly us. Need we remind you that the OL3 EPR reactor in Olkiluoto, Finland has been under construction since 2004, the EPR at Flamanville, France has been under construction since 2006. And there are still questions about the ‘adequacy’ of the EPR’s safety systems.

AREVA then move straight to the fantasy…

The EPR™ reactor is currently the most powerful reactor in the world...

(No it isn’t – it hasn’t been built yet.)

AREVA guarantees the safety of its reactor…

(It could guarantee snow in Summer but that wouldn’t make it any more likely. AREVA can make as many guarantees as it likes but what will those guarantees be worth after a major accident? Can you clean up nuclear contamination with a guarantee? Figures vary as to the cost of the Chernobyl disaster but a quarter of a trillion dollars is a conservative estimate. Does AREVA have that kind of money? It will be governments and taxpayers who will be paying for any clean-up.)

So what does this mean? What it always does: more cost, more delays, more uncertainty, more spin, more fantasy, and more distraction from the fight against climate change. It means more of the same from AREVA and those who support them.

Posted by Justin at 6:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

With the nuclear industry desperately scrambling to get its nuclear ‘renaissance’ off the ground, and the new fleet of third-generation reactors looking distinctly third-rate, it’s worth reminding yourself just where things are heading: costs are rocketing, expectations are plummeting.

Why not help yourself to a souvenir Greenpeace EPR counter for your own website or blog? It comes in two styles…

wide…

…and tall (as you can see at the top right of this page)…

Simply copy and paste the code into your own website or blog template.

How the counter works:

The accumulating costs above are based on the EUR 1.7 billion overrun announced by Areva/TVO plus an extra EUR 1.2 billion which will be needed to purchase electricity that has not been produced by Olkiluoto-3 since its projected start. These costs will eventually be paid for by Nordic electricity consumers and French taxpayers, either through higher bills for customers or through taxes. A taste of the future for those citizens of countries looking to adopt EPR for their own nuclear ‘renaissances’.

Posted by Justin at 6:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, we’ve all heard the hype and propaganda about the forthcoming nuclear ‘renaissance’ with its shiny and new so-called third generation of nuclear reactors. The thing is, it’s looking as if the biggest barrier to this ‘renaissance’ taking place might actually be that shiny and new so-called third generation of nuclear reactors.

You see, this latest generation of nuclear reactors are, to put it mildly, a little on the flaky side…

The design for Westinghouse’s AP-1000 has recently been rejected by the US’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission because ‘a key component might not withstand events like earthquakes and tornadoes’. The projected cost of building them varies wildly as well.

GE Hitachi’s Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) remains in the ‘early design stage’. Late last year, US energy corporation Exelon dropped plans to build a ESBWR in Texas because the ESBWR wouldn’t have earned them the vital government loan guarantees that keep the nuclear industry afloat. GE Hitachi also withdrew the design from the UK’s currently ongoing reactor evaluation process.

Canada’s Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (AECL) also withdrew their ACR-1000 reactor design from the UK process. In July last year Canada’s own province of Ontario pulled the plug on plans to build two ACR-1000s after the project was priced at 26 billion Canadian dollars, three times what the province wanted to pay.

Which leaves us with French nuclear ogre Areva’s infamous European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) design. Two are currently under construction in the world – one in Olkiluoto in Finland and one in Flamanville in France. The EPR design has quickly become a symbol for everything wrong with the nuclear industry – expensive, late, unreliable, and farcical.

How are things going at those construction sites right now. Well, after it being announced that its anybody’s guess as to when the Olkiluoto OL3 reactor may be ready (it’s currently four years late), Areva said this week that the EPR at Flamanville is now running two years late as well. The company is also making a EUR 300 million provision on top of OL3’s rapidly expanding – and profit-killing - EUR 5.5 billion budget.

In fact, all you need to know about building an EPR reactor is summed up in this simple graph…

Click image for a larger version

The graph upturns at the precise moment construction began. How much higher will those lines reach?

The nuclear industry is starting to look like its own worst enemy.

Posted by Justin at 1:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bad news from the construction site of the OL3 EPR nuclear reactor at Olkiluoto in Finland arrives with such reliable and alarming regularity you can almost set your watch by it.

First up we have Jouni Silvennoinen, head of OL3 project for Finnish utility TVO, announcing that the reactor might not now be working until 2013, four years later than planned. TVO has now requested a new timetable from Areva, the reactor’s builders. The reasons Silvennoinen gives for this further delay are problems with the EPR reactor’s vital control and instrumentation system design, and ‘accumulation of delays in construction’. And what an ‘accumulation’…

The second piece of bad news is rather more worrying. The Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority Finland (STUK) has suspended welding on OL3’s essential cooling system (one of the most important parts of a nuclear reactor) after…

…STUK’s inspectors noticed deficiencies in the welding of the pipes in the plant’s cooling system between 6th and 8th October 2009. Among the deficiencies observed were that one welder did not have the welding instructions at his disposal, neither was he familiar with the welding requirements, as a result of which an excessive amount of power was being used in the welding. Other deviations noticed concerned the use of shielding gas necessary for welding and the shape of the contact surfaces to be welded.

The reactor’s builders have been told time and time again about the poor standards in the welding of this so-called state of the art nuclear reactor. Why have lessons not been learned? How hard can it be to ensure a welder – working on a nuclear reactor - has proper instructions and knows his equipment?

STUK has previously drawn attention to welding quality and its supervision in the welding of the steel lining of the containment building, amongst others. STUK has also required TVO to take into account what has been learned from this experience in pipe welding and its supervision. The matter will continue to require special attention from TVO as the volume of pipe installation work increases in the near future.

The EPR reactor is supposed to be the future of nuclear power. You don’t need a crystal ball to see what that future’s shaping up to look like. It’s going to be a very expensive future, shoddily built and arriving late. EPR must be stopped.

Posted by Justin at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

‘In preparation for this new reactor boom…’

Areva does its bit for public confidence in its new EPR reactor.

Posted by Justin at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The OL3 nuclear European Pressurized Reactor (EPR), being built by French nuclear giant AREVA at Olkiluoto in Finland, is in such desperate financial trouble it has single-handedly wiped out the company’s half year profits.

The company’s operating profit is down by 97 per cent and net profit is down by 79 per cent – all thanks to the disastrous Olkiluoto EPR project. Facing up to the realities of nuclear reactor construction – the only true answer to the question ‘how much does a reactor cost?’ being ‘we’ll tell you when it’s finished’ – AREVA CEO Anne Lauvergeon has finally admitted that it is impossible to predict the final cost of OL3.

When the OL3 project was presented to Finnish government and parliament for (an ultimately positive) decision, TVO said the cost would be EUR 2.5 billion. The contracted fixed budget was EUR 3.2 billion. After years of schedule overruns, safety violations, and thousands of construction defects, the cost of this so-called state-of-the-art third generation reactor - one of just two being built in the world right now – now stands at EUR 5.5 billion. The counter above shows just how much OL3 is over schedule and over budget. To think AREVA describe EPR as ‘a cost effective reactor’.

The profit announcement has resulted in another very public argument between AREVA and the reactor’s owners, Finnish utility TVO. AREVA are demanding TVO help carry some of the financial burden (one billion euros and counting) – despite OL3 being a ‘turnkey’ project with a fixed price – and are threatening to suspend construction until the original contracts are modified.

So now Areva starts blackmailing its Finnish partner in an attempt to force it to cover at least some of the massive cost overrun. Anne Lauvergnon said that Areva will not commence with some of the construction unless TVO agrees to modified contracts. So far, it seems these threats have been made only in the media as TVO says it has not been informed about ‘discontinuing work or presented any conditions for the continuation of work on the OL3 construction site’

The countries – China, UK, US, India, Italy and others – looking to build their own EPRs are surely watching closely. How must potential investors be feeling, watching a reactor builder refusing to complete construction unless contracts are changed in its favour?

The real losers in this are of course Finnish electricity consumers (who face higher bills) and French taxpayers (AREVA is 91 per cent owned by the French state). In other words, the OL3 EPR reactor cannot be completed without massive public subsidies.

Arrogance and a misplaced faith in its own abilities have brought AREVA to this position. Like the rest of the nuclear industry, the EPR reactor is a dangerous and failing experiment (the other EPR being built at Flamanville in France is also hugely over budget and behind schedule, and has seen the same construction problems as OL3). EPR is massively expensive, untried and untested, and a block to the real and urgently needed solutions to climate change – renewable energy sources and energy efficiency programmes.

EPR is unaffordable both financially and environmentally. Construction Olkiluoto must be abandoned.

Posted by Justin at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So how are things going at the construction site of the OL3 EPR reactor at Olkiluoto in Finland? The builders, Areva, can update us…

Sounds like it’s all going perfectly well. No mention of the three year delay until the reactor is completed or the nearly two billion euro cost of that delay. Funny that.

There’s also a curious figure on Areva’s blog concerning the number of people working to complete the OL3 EPR: 3,500 to be precise. That’s quite a different number from the 9,000 UK environment minister Ed Miliband said each new EPR in the country will provide. Who’s right? As ever when it comes to nuclear power, don’t trust the numbers.

Posted by Justin at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It began in Finland where the first case was discovered. It took hold slowly but is causing widespread concern among the public and scientists despite government assurances. It spread to France and is causing the same alarm there. Both countries seem to be suffering quite badly.

Other countries across the world – the United Kingdom, the US, China, India, the United Arab Emirates and Italy – may also be affected as it looks set to spread. It was announced today that Brazil may be the latest nation to succumb.

Yes, the world is in the grip of EPR fever.

The Finnish and French governments made terrible mistakes when trying to control the disastrous outbreak of these so-called third generation state of the art nuclear reactors in their countries. Instead of quarantining the carrier, French nuclear pariahs Areva, the Finnish and French governments instead allowed Areva to leave taking EPR fever with it.

It now looks as if EPR fever may be spreading to the rest of the world. At this stage, scientists are unable to say how many more will fall victim but it is hoped that other countries will learn the lessons of Finland and France and work hard to prevent outbreaks of their own.

Without wishing to alarm the public, we are nonetheless urging everyone to be vigilant. Although very slow moving, EPR fever may strike at any time and, while it can be easily stamped out with the correct treatment, once it takes hold it can be very difficult to get rid of. It may already be too late for Finland and France but other countries may yet escape if care is taken. The rest of the world should wash its hands of EPR fever.

Posted by Justin at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nuclear power is cheap, the nuclear industry boasts. Isn’t time that myth was finally laid to rest? The latest example of nuclear’s false financial promise has emerged in Canada in recent days.

Late last month, the Ontario provincial government announced it was postponing its plans to build new nuclear reactors after it was found that the cost would be "billions" too high compared to what the province is able to pay.

Now it turns out that the price tag is in fact three times higher than what was expected: for two Candu reactors is 26 billion Canadian dollars – 16 billion Euros or eight billion each. Two EPR reactors would cost Ontario 23.6 billion Canadian dollars – 14.7 billion Euros or 7.35 billion each.

When Areva persuaded the Finnish government back in 2002 to build the disaster-prone EPR reactor at Olkiluoto, the price they quoted was 2.5 billion Euros (it’s currently costing five billion and counting). Seven years later and an EPR costs nearly three times as much. Talk about inflation!

The two Candu reactors would cost 10,800 Canadian dollars per kilowatt of power capacity. In 2007 the Ontario Power Authority assumed for a price of $2,900 per kilowatt – a third of the actual cost. The EPR price tag now says €4,587 per kilowatt of power capacity, while the International Energy Agency still tends to use a price of €1,600 per kilowatt in policy recommendations. Can you think of any other walk of life where getting figures so wrong would be tolerated? Thank goodness these guys aren’t in the census business – imagine the chaos they’d cause.

So what has the Ontario provincial government done? That’s right, it’s gone to the national government to ask for a bail-out, like a kid begging daddy for a larger allowance.

‘By simplifying any one submission down to a single number at this point would be very difficult to do and highly speculative,’ said Amy Tang, a spokeswoman for the Ontario energy ministry. She’s absolutely right. No-one can ever be sure how much a nuclear reactor will cost, least of all the nuclear industry whose promises and projections should never be believed, until the thing is completed. Going on previous experience, you should expect those figures to rise sharply.

Posted by Justin at 3:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

‘If Greenpeace had said at the start that after four years of construction it’s going to be three and a half years late and 60% over budget everybody would have laughed at them.’

(Steve Thomas, Professor of Energy Policy at Greenwich University, speaking about the disastrous construction of the OL3 EPR reactor at Olkiluoto in Finland.)

Posted by Justin at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After Areva - builders of the disaster-prone state-of-the-art third generation OL3 European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) in Olkiluoto, Finland - lost its reputation and credibility over the project, it only had one thing left to lose: its dignity.

And so it happens. The recriminations over just who is to blame for the world’s largest prototype reactor being massively over budget and over schedule, which doubts over its design and construction, have begun. Areva are now engaged in a very public and childish game of he-said-she-said with the reactor’s owners, Finnish utility TVO and nuclear safety agency, STUK.

Jukka Laaksonen, director general of STUK says…

They (Areva) started planning when they won the contract, which was of course too late. They should have used two years for planning (in advance)… The French did not understand at first the Finnish system, that no important device can be built before the plan is approved.

Areva weren’t going to take that lying down and managing director of Finnish operations, Osmo Kaipainen, argued back…

"Authorities are never satisfied" when it comes to meeting safety regulations, he said. He added that TVO was slow delivering Areva-Siemens' documents to STUK for validation, needed before moving from one building task to another.

Those pesky safety agencies and their fussy ways about… safety. Whatever next? We’re not sure if we’d like to eat a meal cooked by an Areva executive – let’s hope they wash their hands and cook the chicken properly.

TVO managed to confuse things further by saying Areva had spent "significantly more time on planning" than the contract asked for. STUK say not enough time was spent by Areva on planning, TVO say too much time was spent. You’d feel sorry for Areva if they hadn’t made a complete disaster of the OL3 construction from the very start and were capable of giving a straight answer to a straight question themselves.

On the whole, Areva, TVO and STUK all look and sound like children squabbling over which of them gets the biggest piece of cake. If it was up to us the three of them would be sent to bed without any supper.

(Apparently Areva have declared the OL3 EPR as the first child of the ‘rebirth of the nuclear industry’. Boy, it’s going to be an ugly baby.)

Posted by Justin at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In May we told you that the review being conducted by the UK’s Nuclear Installations Inspectorate into new reactor designs had issues with EDF and Areva’s European Pressurised Reactor (EPR). Further details are now coming out about how the Inspectorate regards the EPR design as ‘significantly compromised’…

The Health and Safety Executive, which oversees the NII, said that the EPR design could be rejected for use in Britain if its concerns could not be satisfactorily addressed. “It is our regulatory judgment that the control and instrumentation architecture appears overly complex,” the NII letter [to EDF] said. “We have serious concerns about your proposal which allows lower safety class systems to have write access [the ability to override] to higher safety class systems,” it continued.

The letter also highlighted concerns about the absence of safety display systems or manual controls that would allow the reactor to be shut down, either in the station’s control room or at an emergency remote shutdown station.

In other words, the NII don’t trust the designs of EPR’s control and safety systems. Areva is apparently ‘scrambling to produce revised plans’, a situation mirrored in Finland where plans for the control system for the massively late and over-budget EPR being built in Olkiluoto have been described by Finland nuclear watchdog STUK as ‘without a proper design that meets the basic principles of nuclear safety’.

Apparently, in the UK’s case, ‘the design assessment phase could be delayed well past its expected completion in 2011.’ So in Finland, so in the UK. Areva and EDF are nothing if not consistent.

Posted by Justin at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How this works:

The accumulating costs above are based on the EUR 1.7 billion overrun announced by Areva/TVO plus an extra EUR 1.2 billion which will be needed to purchase electricity that has not been produced by Olkiluoto-3 since its projected start.

These costs will eventually be paid for by Nordic electricity consumers and French taxpayers, either through higher bills for customers or through taxes.

The financing of Areva’s EPR programme isn’t going well at all. It needs ‘between eight and 10 billion euros by 2012 to fund its investment programme’ and a desperate French government are putting parts of the company up for sale.

Related posts: EPR: Enfant Terrible of the French Nuclear Industry

Posted by Justin at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)