While the State has decided to put pressure on EDF about the Flamanville EPR, Nicolas Barré takes stock of the situation.

A "failure for EDF" and "for the entire nuclear industry", is the conclusion of a report on the excesses of the site of the EPR Flamanville.

This report submitted on Monday by Jean-Martin Folz, former boss of PSA, has the great merit of drawing the clinical findings of the excesses of this site and this failure that holds in a few staggering figures. The Flamanville EPR project, launched in 2006 by EDF, was to be a four-year project and cost 3.3 billion euros. But the bill today amounts to 12 billion euros and this reactor will not be put into service before the end of 2022. How did we get there? Jean-Martin Folz points the responsibilities of EDF teams, poor organization, poorly managed relationships with suppliers, difficult with Areva (it's a euphemism). And to top it all off "a widespread loss of skills" of the industry that had not built reactors for 16 years.

But suddenly, does that condemn this technology of EPR?

No, and this is the other key point of this report: two EPRs are in operation in China, it is "the proof, says the report, of the relevance of the concept and the design of the EPR". French engineers are quite capable of doing the same thing and EDF can recover from its mistakes. The real subject is political. France must, in principle, decide before the end of the five-year period whether it is building new EPRs to replace its old plants. But the delays of Flamanville complicate the deal, it is difficult to launch new projects as long as this reactor does not run. The future of the French nuclear industry is more than ever suspended for the good end of this shipyard-nightmare for EDF.