The deafening noise of the huge turbine running at full power sounds like a relief: twelve years late, the EPR nuclear reactor in Olkiluoto, Finland, is coming on stream just before a very tense winter for energy in Europe.
Steam from the nearby reactor, heated to nearly 300 degrees, spins the 60-meter-long turbine up to 25 times per second, heating the atmosphere inside the building to a Finnish sauna-like temperature for the visitor wearing the protective gear.
After long months of testing, normal commissioning is scheduled for December, but the concrete and steel cathedral built by the French group Areva on the southwest coast of the country reached full capacity at the end of September.
“It took a lot of perseverance and years of hard work to get to this point, so we’re feeling pretty good right now,” confessed Johanna Aho, a spokeswoman for the Finnish nuclear operator TVO.
With 1,600 megawatts, it is now the most powerful reactor in Europe and the third most powerful in the world. When “OL3” reached full capacity on September 30 for the first time since its construction was announced in 2003, it alone produced about 20% of the electricity consumed in Finland – 40% if the two existing OL1 and OL2 reactors are added.
“That’s a lot of electricity and that’s the stable, predictable level of generation that nuclear power provides,” Aho boasts.
The timing is crucial as Finland is facing a halt in electricity deliveries from Russia, which means an import capacity of about 1,000 MW.
A possible new problem would be bad news for the Nordic country, which has already had to operate oil-fired backup plants last month.
Sweden remains a possible source of supply, but the neighboring country is itself facing shortages this winter.
At the beginning of October, about ten full-power tests remained to be carried out on Olkiluoto 3, during which the reactor will periodically stop producing for several days or even weeks.
The enormous cost overruns of the project, which began in 2005, have been one of the main causes of Areva’s industrial dismantling, which has led to losses of several billion euros.
One structure remains, whose main task is to complete the Olkiluoto site.
– Litigation –
Despite this fiasco, support for civil nuclear power has grown in recent years in Finland, spurred by climate concerns and global energy tensions. According to a poll published in May, 60% of Finns are now in favor of it, a record.
However, since the cancellation in May of the Hanhikivi 1 nuclear project of Finland’s Fennovoima and Russia’s Rosatom, no new nuclear reactor project has been launched other than OL3.
Already in 2006, delays in the construction of the main cooling pipe had postponed the start-up of the reactor to 2010-2011.
The Finnish nuclear safety agency STUK had then requested in 2009 several hundred improvements due to “construction-related problems”, opening a conflict between the operator of the future reactor, the Finnish TVO, and Areva-Siemens, with also criticism of the Finnish regulator.
After several years of litigation and further delays, Areva had finally settled its dispute with TVO in November 2018, paying a compensation of 450 million euros.
Launched in 1992 as the ultimate in French nuclear technology, the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) was designed to revive nuclear energy in Europe in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
The new model was presented as offering both higher power and better safety, but its construction is proving to be a headache, and not only in Finland.
In France, the construction of the Flamanville EPR, which began in 2007, has also been affected by massive delays, due in particular to anomalies in the steel cover and the reactor vessel.
The EPR has also been selected for a two-reactor plant at Hinkley Point in southwest England, where the construction site has suffered from the coronavirus pandemic.
Electricity production is currently planned for mid-2027, instead of the original 2025.
In China, two EPRs have been launched at the Taishan power plant in the southeast of the country in 2019. One of the reactors, which was shut down for a year due to a leak, resumed production in August.
