As Germany closes its last nuclear power plants this weekend, Finland is commissioning Europe’s most powerful nuclear reactor. The EPR Olkiluoto 3, of Franco-German design, will alone produce 14% of the country’s electricity. The end of a project which took 13 years of delay, which was marked by many technical problems… and additional costs.
With our correspondent in the region, Calotta Morteo
It represents the ultimate in nuclear technology. Olkiluoto 3, reactor presented as very powerful and much safer, was above all a real technical headache and cost four times more than expected: in twenty years, the bill has gone from 3.5 billion euros to around 11 billion euros. This is one of the main causes of the industrial dismantling of Areva.
A fiasco and a soap opera in Finland until the time of the final tests, in September 2022. The discovery of several cracks in the island of the turbine had forced the operator TVO to stop this 1,600 megawatt reactor which was running for the first times at full speed.
To avoid power cuts during the winter, since Russian deliveries have been stopped since Finland’s candidacy for NATOHelsinki had been obliged to operate oil-fired reserve power stations and to buy electricity from Sweden.
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Thanks to this new EPR (European pressurized reactor), which is added to two other reactors, the Olkiluoto site on the Gulf of Bothnia will produce more than a third of national electricity production. That is to say if it is vital. Its start-up is a relief for the Finns, who are – despite all the hazards of this project – very favorable to nuclear power (between 60 and 70% according to the polls).
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