Over budget and over schedule - EDF's nuclear chaos

EDF's construction of a prototype European Pressurised Water nuclear reactor (EPR) plant in Flamanville, Normandy, France is four years behind schedule and currently estimated to cost twice as much as the original price tag.

In a serious understatement, EDF's Hervé Machenaud, Group Senior Executive in charge of Production and Engineering, called the project "a major challenge" for the industrial expertise of the nuclear industry. It has suffered two fatal accidents and is undergoing restructuring.

As a result, Centrica has been advised by investors Evolution Securities and Citigroup not to partner with Electricité de France (EDF) to build new nuclear power stations in the UK.

Centrica is due to join with EDF in the £4bn joint enterprise, but the company is "a minority holder in a technology in which it has no institutional understanding, and where, as emphasised by Flamanville, construction risk is notorious," said Evolution's utilities analyst Lakis Athanasiou.

The British CEO of EDF, Vincent de Rivaz, has admitted the schedule for opening new plants in the UK by 2018 is slipping but attributes this to the company just "taking stock".

The Government is hoping for eight new nuclear plants to be operational by that year. Based on the new delays and price overruns, according to Jim Watson, professor of energy policy at the university of Sussex, the price of such electricity would be 33% and 45% higher than that in the Government's figures which rate it as the cheapest form of low carbon electricity - although the figures exclude interest during construction and decommissioning costs.

Watson now puts new nuclear costs on a par with offshore wind.

Moreover, as pointed out here, for less than half cost of replacing one nuclear plant we could retrofit 1.6m homes for efficiency - eliminating the need for the plant!