A ghost of nuclear’s future in Finland?

Areva EPR

It’s been a month since AmerenUE declared that it was suspending plans to build a second nuclear plant in Missouri after efforts to repeal the state’s ban on construction work in progress (CWIP) failed.

Backers of the legislation said Missourians missed a golden opportunity to secure its low-carbon future, and wean the state off its coal addiction (one that could be significantly more expensive if Congress follows through on climate change legislation).

AmerenUE had decided whether to go through with plans to build another nuclear plant. In case it did, the plant design it chose was Areva NP’s Evolutinary Power Reactor, EPR for short. (Areva was an owner of UniStar Nuclear, which had contracted with AmerenUE to help prepare the construction and operating license that was submitted to federal regulators last summer.)

So far, Areva has yet to complete one of the EPR plants. But there are two in progress. One is in Finland and the other is in France.

As the New York Times reports today, owners of the Finnish project have seen more than their share of trouble:

After four years of construction and thousands of recorded defects and
deficiencies, the original €3 billion, or $4.2 billion, price tag on the
Olkiluoto reactor has climbed at least 50 percent. The reactor was supposed to
be completed this summer, but work is so far behind schedule that Areva, the
French company building the facility, and Teollisuuden Voima, the utility that
ordered it, no longer are willing to predict with certainty when it will go
online.

What’s more…

“We have had it easy here,” said Jouni Silvennoinen, the project manager at
Olkiluoto. At least it is a geologically stable site: Earthquake risks in places
like China and the United States or even the threat of storm surges mean that
building these new reactors will be even trickier elsewhere, he said.

For his part, Ameren CEO Tom Voss acknowledged the troubles with the initial EPR reactor in Finland during an interview last summer. However, Voss thought that years from now, by the time construction would have begun on Callaway 2, Areva would have completed two or three of the standardized plants and many, if not all of the problems, would have been ironed out.

Now, we’ll never know.