EDF postpones nuclear project by two years

EDF has been forced to delay one of the world’s biggest atomic power projects by two years in part because of the need to carry out stringent new safety tests following the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in Japan.

Europe’s biggest power generator also warned that the expected costs of the project – the first new nuclear reactor to be built in France in 15 years had risen to €6bn ($9bn).

The company originally hoped to have the new 1,650-megawatt plant at Flamanville in northern France up and running by 2012 and had pencilled in a construction cost of €3.3bn.

The cost over-runs and delays are a blow to the state-owned company and to France because the reactor, known as the EPR, is the first of a new generation of reactors that Paris hopes to export around the world.

Another EPR reactor is being built in Finland by Areva, the French nuclear group, but that has also been beset by delays and spiralling costs.

EDF said there were “structural and economic reasons” behind the new delays to the Flamanville site in Normandy.

However, it highlighted specific delays related to the need to carry out new safety audits in the wake of the Fukushima catastrophe.

The French nuclear safety authority has ordered a reactor-by-reactor study, in addition to carrying out stress tests of the reactors as part of a European Union initiative launched as a result of the Japanese accident.

EDF promised on Wednesday that the safety tests on the new EPR reactor would be submitted to the authority in September.

It said other delays had been caused by two fatal accidents on the construction sites, “including one that partially suspended the civil works for many weeks”.

EDF operates 58 nuclear reactors in France, which provide about three-quarters of the country’s electricity, and 16 in the UK.

Hervé Machenaud, the EDF executive in charge of production and engineering, said that the new reactor at Flamanville was making “exceptional demands” of the company and its industrial partners.

EDF is developing EPRs in China and is drawing up plans for more in the UK and the US.

However, the delays in its domestic project come at a tricky time as the issue of nuclear power could become a factor in the campaign for next year’s French presidential elections.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has so far resisted pressure to cut back on the country’s reliance on atomic power. But some ministers are pushing for a greater commitment to renewable energy and a weakening of the traditional hold of nuclear power over a country that has long led the field in atomic energy.

Critics have accused France’s nuclear lobby – made up of the industry’s powerful unions and state-controlled EDF and Areva – of impeding renewable investment.

France has lagged Germany, Spain and Italy in the production of wind and particularly solar energy.