Every morning, Nicolas Barré takes stock of a current economic issue.
The blow is very hard for EDF who will have to redo the welds of the EPR Flamanville. Can we still believe in the future of nuclear power?
The decision of the Nuclear Safety Authority that imposes these expensive repairs on EDF does not condemn nuclear power, on the contrary: after all, it is a proof of independence of the Safety Authority, but this independence is crucial. This is a prerequisite for public confidence in this technology. The Chinese have completed the construction of the EPR before us. He walks, he is connected to the network. All the better. But are we sure that we can trust the Chinese security agency as much as the French agency?
That it is really independent of power and state power companies? Are we sure that suppliers work with the same level of requirement? These questions remain open. In Japan, after the Fukushima disaster, we realized how much the Local Security Authority was not independent, for the good reason that it was only a Ministry of Trusteeship (it has changed since ). If it had been as demanding as in France, it would probably also have imposed greater constraints on local electricians.
Still, this decision of the Safety Authority is a blow very hard for EDF and its technology
It's a humiliation. The sign of a loss of industrial skills that will have to be filled. And the consequences are very heavy. This means, first of all, a significant capacity deficit for the future since Flamanville will be postponed for several more years: it will have to compensate for the absence of the EPR. Beyond the additional costs - while the bill already amounts to 10.9 billion euros - it is also a significant shortfall for EDF. And then Flamanville was to be a showcase for export: it became the symbol of an endless drift, like the Okiluoto EPR in Finland. You said it, the blow is hard ...