2023-12-21 14:54:16
The announcement is official. EDF confirmed this Thursday the date of connection of the new Flamanville 3 EPR (Manche): “Fuel loading is planned for March 2024” and “the first coupling is planned for mid-2024”, indicates the public company on its page of regulatory messages intended for players in the electricity market. Dates in line with the schedule announced at the end of 2022 but which EDF is putting in black and white for the first time.
The Flamanville 3 EPR must produce a volume of electricity estimated at around 14 TWh between mid-2024 and a first shutdown “of several months” for maintenance planned in 2026, specifies EDF on this same page adding that the schedule is still under study.. The new reactor will be in the testing phase, with passages through different power levels and interruptions, which does not allow its production to be counted.
In a statement separate published this Thursday, EDF announced its estimate of nuclear production for 2026, without therefore taking into account the new EPR. “EDF’s estimate of nuclear production in France in 2026 is between 335 and 365 TWh,” said the public company.
Estimates for 2024 and 2025
For 2024 and 2025, the estimates remain unchanged compared to previous EDF communications, “in the range 315-345 TWh for 2024 and 335-365 TWh for 2025”. In 2022, France’s electricity supply was heavily penalized by the setbacks of EDF’s nuclear fleet, whose production fell to 279 TWh, the lowest in 30 years.
The company, which has returned to full state control, has set itself the objective of increasing nuclear electricity to 400 TWh by 2030. Its forecasts are sensitive for markets where wholesale tariffs are determined. electricity and whose operators are watching for possible imbalances between supply and demand.
The Flamanville 3 EPR was started under construction in 2007. Its costs and schedule have continued to slip since then. It must add a power of 1,650 megawatts (MW) to the network for a bill which should reach 12.7 billion, or around four times more than the initial estimate (3.3 billion euros).
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