"It's an industrial disaster for EDF"

Remember, the Flamanville EPR was originally scheduled to be delivered in 2012. Finally, it should not be ready until the beginning of the year 2020, for a bill of 10.9 billion dollars. euros, nearly four times more than originally estimated. Indeed, EDF announced Wednesday new delays and additional costs for the nuclear reactor located in the Channel.

"A defect in quality management." "These are problems of weld quality on secondary circuits but very important, which evacuate in the form of steam heat from the reactor to the turbines.These are welds which must be of very good quality and which are not ", says engineer Yves Marignac in the morning of Europe 1 Thursday. But according to the director of Wise Paris, an independent information and energy research agency, "the root cause of this problem is a real flaw in quality management at EDF, which has not allowed to detect problems until the last moment, hence the need to re-inspect and do the work. "

" Very disturbing signals. " According to the expert, this new report – which he does not hesitate to describe as "an industrial disaster" – is a very bad signal for the French industrialist. "This is a sign of insufficient capacity of EDF to carry out heavy work with safety requirements," he laments. "We have very worrying signals about the lack of conformity of reactors." From today, I consider that the quality of safety of the park (French nuclear) is degraded and it risks to deteriorate again ", alerts the engineer.

Serious Economic Consequences. The situation, if it is calamitous from a technical point of view, is also economically so. "All this dramatically strikes EDF's finances.The EPR which was to be the flagship of the French nuclear industry, which dreamed of exporting all over the world, is a reactor which, in terms of design and design, is The industrial perspective for the EPR is very black today and the consequences for EDF, in its commercial strategy and in its financial strategy, are extremely problematic, "warns Yves Marignac, who is already expecting to see the bill to increase a little more in the months and years to come.

Towards an additional cost of electricity tariffs By the way, who will pay? "In fine, electricity consumers via their tariffs, but also taxpayers", responds the director of Wise Paris. "We have already had in recent years 7 billion reinvested fresh money in EDF and in the French nuclear industry by the state.It will have to compensate for this new delay.This will result in part by the prices and taxes , taxes, which will serve to bail out this industrial jewel. "