Fission impossible
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Twelve years behind schedule and 15 billion euros in additional costs, the first French EPR reactor started its first nuclear fission on Monday, September 2. With delay: it should deliver its first electrons at the end of the fall at only 25% of its power, before starting up at 100% “in a few months.”
Such a long wait. Initiated twenty years ago under Jacques Chirac, the construction site of the first French EPR, which was initially due to be delivered in 2012 (!), will ultimately have had three other Presidents of the Republic… It has just ended painfully, twelve years late and costs multiplied by four: this Monday, September 2, 2024, at 9 p.m., in the control room of the reactor built on the Flamanville power plant, near Cherbourg in the Manche, the EDF night team began “the divergence operations necessary for the first nuclear reaction” of the EPR, while in Paris we were still waiting for the white smoke of a new Prime Minister appointed by Emmanuel Macron. There is no doubt that between two “consultations” at the Elysée, the Head of State will have appreciated the news at its true value, so much has he made the relaunch of the atom a marker of his Jupiterian presidency: after so many industrial and financial setbacks, the EPR of Flamanville will finally be able to become a showcase for the “new nuclear” French.
“The Flamanville 3 teams (official name of this EPR reactor) are in the starting blocks to launch the divergence operations, the Nuclear Safety Authority gave the approval for this first start-up at 5 p.m., it is a historic milestone for this project”,
