Emmanuel Macron announced in early November that France was preparing to launch the construction of reactors. According to Secretary of State Bérangère Abba, it would be “EPR2, an improved model compared to construction experience feedback from previous EPRs “.
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Two months after the presidential announcements, the vagueness is gradually dissipating. The new nuclear reactors that France plans to build could be the subject of a filing in 2023, for commissioning “in 2035-2037”, indicated Thursday, January 6 to the Senate Bérangère Abba, Secretary of State to the Minister of Ecological Transition.
It would be “in the short term, EPR2, an improved model compared to construction experience feedback from previous EPRs”, she said during a debate with senators on the safety of the atom.
“Without being diviners, we imagine a schedule for submitting files around 2023 for commissioning in 2035-2037. Beforehand, EDF submitted EPR2 safety options to ASN [Autorité de sûreté nucléaire], which validated its principles. We therefore have a framework and feedback on the first EPRs “, she added.
Emmanuel Macron announced in early November that France was preparing to launch the construction of reactors, twenty years after the commissioning of the last French reactors, but he has since given no details on this project.
The CEO of EDF estimated on Tuesday that he was “urgent” to throw “concrete actions”. “The most urgent thing is to launch the dynamic around the construction of the Penly reactors in particular”, the Seine-Maritime site where the first pair of new EPRs should be built, said Jean-Bernard Lévy. EDF has submitted to the State a proposal to build six EPR2 for around fifty billion euros.
France is currently only building on its soil a new generation EPR reactor, that of Flamanville (Manche), which has encountered multiple setbacks, a source of delays and budget extensions. It should be commissioned in a few months, at the end of 2022.