Tag Archives: areva

Olkiluoto 3 Nuclear Plant is Ready: 2005-2020

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Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (Stuk) yesterday informed the government it sees no reason why an operating licence for the first-of-a-kind nuclear plant EPR at Olkiluoto 3 should not be granted to utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO).]…The Areva-Siemens consortium began construction of Olkiluoto 3 – the first-of-a-kind EPR – in 2005 under a turnkey contract signed with TVO in late 2003. Completion of the reactor was originally scheduled for 2009, but the project has suffered various delays and setbacks. Under the latest schedule, fuel will now be loaded into the reactor core in June 2019, with grid connection to take place in October 2019, and the start of regular electricity generation scheduled for January 2020.

In December 2018, unit 1 of the Taishan plant in China’s Guangdong province became the first EPR to enter commercial operation. Taishan 2 is scheduled to begin commercial operation in 2019. The loading of fuel into the core of the Flamanville EPR in France is expected towards the end of this year. Two EPR units are also under construction at the Hinkley Point C project in Somerset, UK.

Excerpts from Regulator concludes Finnish EPR can operate safely, Nuclear News, Feb. 2019

One Player, Many Pawns: the thirst for nuclear technology

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The nuclear power industry, which had been in the doldrums since the 1980s, suffered a devastating blow in 2011 when a tsunami engulfed the Fukushima power plant in Japan, ultimately causing a meltdown. The amount of electricity generated by nuclear power worldwide plunged 11% in two years, and has not recovered since. Within this declining industry, one country now dominates the market for design and export of nuclear plants: Russia.

Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear-power company,  is focused on what some call the “great grand middle”: countries that are close allies of neither the United States nor Russia. In April Russia started building Turkey’s first nuclear plant, worth $20bn. Its first reactor is due for completion in 2023. Rosatom says it has 33 new plants on its order book, worth some $130bn. A dozen are under construction, including in Bangladesh, India and Hungary…. Once completed the plants offer an obvious diplomatic lever in the form of sway over a large portion of a country’s electricty generation… The relationship betweeen exporter and customer is particularly close in a nuclear plant’s early years, when local employees are still being trained and the exporting country is direclty involved in the plant’s operation….

Russia’s nuclear programme has endured for two main reasons. Its designs are cheap, and Rosatom enjoys the backing of the state, which helps it absorb hard-to-insure risks like nuclear meltdowns. Its competitors trail hopelessly: France’s Areva (now Orano) has started building only two plants in the past ten years, in Finland and China; both are delayed and over budget. KEPCO, South Korea’s energy company, is facing a domestic backlash against nuclear power, while Westinghouse, in America, is only now emerging from bankruptcy.

Russia’s only real competitor is China..Yet although China will surely catch up, for now Russia has no serious rivals in the export of nuclear technology. In a world that needs to generate much more electricity from nuclear power if it is to take decarbonisation seriously, that is a sobering though

Excerpts from  Atoms for Peace: Russia and Nuclear Power, Economist, Aug. 4, 2018, at 43

Nuclear Power to Relish: China

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On February 23, 2016, China General Nuclear Power Group, hosted dozens of business executives from Kenya, Russia, Indonesia and elsewhere, as well as diplomats and journalists, at its Daya Bay nuclear-power station to promote the Hualong One for export.  Asked how much of the global market share for new nuclear reactors CGN wants Hualong One to win, Zheng Dongshan, CGN’s deputy general manager in charge of international business, said: “The more the better.”

The move marks a turnaround for China and the nuclear-power industry. For three decades, China served as a big market for nuclear giants including U.S.-based, Japanese-owned Westinghouse Electric Co. and France’s Areva SA. More than 30 reactors have been built across China since the 1990s with reliance on foreign design and technology.

China’s push into nuclear power comes as many nations have been re-examining the risks of nuclear energy and its costs compared with natural gas and other fuels. Two dozen reactors are under construction across China today, representing more than one-third of all reactors being built globally, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The scale and pace of building has given CGN and other Chinese companies opportunities to bulk up on experience in the home market and gain skills in developing reactor parts, technologies and systems. That experience, combined with China’s lower costs of labor and capital, makes the new Chinese reactor potentially attractive to international customers, industry experts said…

[T]he first of Hualong One model reactor won’t enter service in China for several more years.  But the Hualong One reactor marks a big leap by China’s national nuclear champions to move up the export value chain. Jointly designed by CGN and China National Nuclear Corp., the reactor, also known as the HPR1000, has similar specifications to other so-called Generation 3 reactors such as Westinghouse’s AP1000, like advanced so-called passive safety systems.

China Inc’s Nuclear Power Push, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 24, 2016

National Security and Nuclear Industry

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[A third nuclear reactor is to be built in Flamanville, France  by Electricité de France (EDF)]…Called Flamanville 3, is likely to become the focus of international attention because it is the model for an imminent expansion across the channel…EDF has agreed on October 21st agreed with China General Nuclear Power Corp (CGN), a state-owned entity, to build two reactors of the same design in south-west England called Hinkley Point C. EDF will own two-thirds of the project and CGN a third. The plant in Somerset is supposed to open by 2025, after construction that is forecast to cost £24.5 billion ($37.8 billion)…

The history of Flamanville 3, where work began in 2007, indicates how difficult that might be. It was planned as a five-year scheme, but this month EDF, which is mostly state-owned, formally asked officials to extend the deadline to 2020. Its original budget of €3.3 billion has more than tripled, to €10.5 billion ($11.9 billion). Getting its new European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) into service is proving harder than expected. One problem is the troubled condition of Areva, another mostly state-owned French firm, which supplies reactor components. It reported losses of nearly €5 billion in March, because of soaring costs and long delays at the only other EPR being built in Europe, Olkiluoto 3, in Finland. Work began in 2005 but it will not open before 2018 at the earliest.

The main technical problem at Flamanville 3 concerns suspicions of high levels of carbon in the steel of a crucial component, the vessel, already installed under the dome of the new reactor. Replacing it now, if inspectors conclude it is too brittle, would be costly. In June the company also said it was double-checking the working of safety valves.

Meanwhile EDF’s financial burden grows. It boasts of €73 billion in global revenues, but faces a threefold strain. Demand for electricity is stalling in France, its main market—and, as problematic, the country plans to cut nuclear’s share of electricity generation to half of the total, by 2025, from 75%. Next, though details are not finalised, EDF will absorb the nuclear unit of troubled Areva. Last, it has to upgrade, or at least maintain, France’s stock of ageing reactors. Mr Lévy told French radio on October 18th that capital expenditure for that alone would be around €50 billion.

No wonder ratings agencies judge that EDF’s financial prospects are secure only because of its state backing.  EDF’s prospects, indeed those of any nuclear company, depend on the backing of politicians who want to preserve nuclear expertise and jobs at home.

EDF’s Nuclear Ambitions: French Lessons, Economist,Oct. 24, 2015, at 63

Nuclear Industry: France, Russia and China

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[Regarding the French nuclear company Areva] its newest product, the expensive European Pressurised Reactor (EPR), has encountered more than the teething problems common to all big industrial projects. A plant in Finland is almost ten years behind schedule and almost three times over budget: Areva has had to write off billions as a result….Two reactors in China and the only new-build in France, at Flamanville, are also running late. EDF played an important role in managing the Chinese and French projects.

Besides criticism for slack project management, Areva and EDF (Electricite de France) have been questioned over technical standards. The steel in the main reactor vessel at Flamanville is faulty, the Nuclear Safety Authority said in April 2015. EDF disputes the finding and, with Areva, has started new tests. The news added to growing disenchantment in Britain with an agreement, not yet firm, that expensively entrusts the construction of a power station incorporating two Areva EPRs to a consortium led by EDF.  It seems unlikely that Areva will find many more foreign takers for its existing reactor…

[S]ome of Areva’s rivals are racing ahead. Rosatom, a Russian nuclear firm, has built up a fat order-book. Keen pricing, generous financing and relaxed technology transfer help, though Western sanctions do not. China’s two reactor-builders, CNNC and CGN, are peddling their own new design, Hualong One; in February CNNC signed a preliminary agreement to supply a reactor to Argentina.

Areva has little reason to hope for a surge of new orders at home. France’s 58 reactors are elderly but EDF, which operates them, plans to revamp rather than replace them…A new law set to come into force this summer, pledging somehow to cut France’s dependence on nuclear power from 75% to 50% of its electricity needs by 2025, will make Areva’s prospects even bleaker.

Excerpts from France’s nuclear industry: Arevaderci, Economist, May 23, 2015, at 53.