This is one of the last stages of a series lasting more than three decades. This Friday, December 19, EDF must connect the Flamanville EPR (Manche) to the national electricity network. The culmination, twelve years late, of a process begun in 1989.
Although it will only reach its full production capacity at the end of the testing phase, in the summer of 2025, the new generation pressurized water reactor must supply two million homes in the Greater West with electricity. . An additional guarantee of energy security for Brittany, which only produces a third of the electricity it consumes (31.8% in 2023).
To provide its 3.8 million inhabitants with electricity, the peninsula relies on renewable energies and has retained two oil-fired power plants as well as a gas power plant, located in Finistère. Since the abandonment of the nuclear power plant project at Plogoff in 1981, as well as the closure, in 1985, of the experimental nuclear reactor at Brennilis, based on French heavy water technology, Brittany has been kept away from political national atom revival. The region is therefore very largely dependent on electricity produced in its neighbors, particularly in Normandy where six reactors are located. Seven other regions of mainland France are in the same case.
A “local risk”, according to RTE
« The north-western quarter of France is the only region of metropolitan territory, excluding Corsica, affected by a local risk in terms of security of supplywrote RTE, network manager, in a report published in autumn 2020. In winter, the increase in consumption leads to massive transits of electricity to supply this area. » Problem: these transfers inherently cause energy losses and can disrupt network management.
During periods when demand for electricity increases sharply, the Breton electricity network is also supplied by the Cordemais coal-fired power station, installed between Nantes and Saint-Nazaire. This operated a little less than 3,000 hours (the equivalent of 125 days) during the year 2022.
And its future has been conditional since 2018 on the entry into operation of the Flamanville EPR. “ The Cordemais power plant remains necessary to secure the supply of the Great West as long as the Flamanville EPR has not reached its nominal operation », communicated RTE in September 2023.
Closure in 2027 for Cordemais
As a result of the connection of this new reactor to the national network, the closure of the Cordemais site is planned for 2027. Time to ensure the full capacity operation of the Flamanville EPR which, with its 1,600 MW, is the reactor the most powerful among the 57 that France now has.
The coal-fired power plant, for its part, was to be converted to biomass before EDF announced last September the abandonment of this project. A Framatome factory will emerge instead. It will be intended for the manufacture of pipes for the second generation EPRs… little brothers of the new Flamanville reactor.
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