The new generation nuclear reactor is planned to be connected to the electricity grid in the summer of 2024.
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Home stretch for the construction site after twelve years of delay. Uranium fuel loading operations in the new EPR reactor at the Flamanville power station (Manche) were completed on Wednesday June 15, AFP learned from the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) on Thursday May 16.
Loading began on May 8 in the reactor building swimming pool, after EDF had obtained authorization from ASN the day before, at the end of a long and difficult project. In total, the EPR, the most powerful reactor in the French fleet, was to receive in its tank some 60,000 “pencils”, thin tubes 5 meters long containing uranium pellets.
“Afterwards, we close the tank. Then tests are carried out with the tank closed, and then there will be stages of increasing pressure and temperature which will allow other safety devices to be tested”, described the Deputy Director General of ASN, on the sidelines of the presentation of the ASN annual report on the state of nuclear safety in France. Several stages are in fact still awaited before the reactor can deliver its first electrons, expected during the summer.
