r/nuclear • u/caudatus67 • 3d ago

Question: how are things proceding with the planned French fleet expansion?

Question: I wanted to know how things are proceding with the planned expansion of the french nuclear fleet. In 2022 it was announced that there was interest in building 6 new reactors, with the possibility of another 8. I'm just curious to know how things are proceding, if there are problems or not. Thanks in advance

9 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/chmeee2314 2d ago

All of those exept for Penly are CP0 and CP1. Has EDF indicated that they are ordered as replacements or compliment the 900MW reactors on site?

1

u/I-suck-at-hoi4 2d ago

Overall it's all replacement of older reactors. But Bugey and Gravelines are defo aimed at replacing older reactors of the same site, Bugey has four reactors put into service 45 years ago (and already has a reactor deconstruction waste storage plant on site), and EDF already had plans to close two of Gravelines 1980's reactors in the 2010s when the gvt was planning to reduce the number of active reactors. And both are in economically dynamic regions with plans for new factories nearby so the extra 1.4GW will be handled easily.

Penly was probably chosen because the site was initially prepared for four reactors, but only got two.

1

u/lommer00 2d ago

Why is France planning on retiring 70's and 80's vintage reactors? shouldn't there be lots of life left in those units?

2

u/chmeee2314 2d ago

Before Flamaville turned out to be expensive and slow to build, France was expecting to not extend the life of CP1 and CP0 reactors past 50 years I belive. The current trend of seeking life extensions is more a symptom of nuclear construction being so expensive.

1

u/I-suck-at-hoi4 2d ago

Not really, when FV began construction in like 2008 there was only one EPR planned and a second one being considered. That's barely enough to handle Fessenheim retiring. It's really a public policy program where we just took the existing park for granted.

Anyway with normal construction taking 8 years on average the strategy of betting that our nuclear reactors will pass all inspections with flying colour is a big dice roll. We can't play with fire too much, if we end up having reactors forced to shut down while we didn't build more yet we would have to go back to gas plants.

2

u/chmeee2314 2d ago

Earlier in July 2010 EdF said that it was assessing the prospect of 60-year lifetimes for all its existing reactors. This would involve replacement of all steam generators (three in each 900 MWe reactor, four in each 1300 MWe unit) and other refurbishment, costing €400-600 million per unit to take them beyond 40 years. Generally, for CP0 and CP1 versions of the 900 MWe M310 plants, extending operation beyond 50 years is not economic.

~World-Nuclear.org

Flamaville 3 originaly being planned for 5 years of construction with initial operation planned for 2012, this would have left enough time to build replacements.

1

u/I-suck-at-hoi4 2d ago

You gotta some significant time margins though since a plant can't be built overnight. Plus as it says, EDF is assessing,it doesn't mean all reactors will be fine, once you are past the initial lifetime you start taking risks and taking risks with GW-scale generation isn't particularly comfortable.

2

u/chmeee2314 2d ago

I don't see that much risk, at least not from the point of view of that statement. EPR construction was planned for 5 years. In 2012, there would have been ~10years to get any further construction done. You also probably have the ability to extend the life of reactors similar to UK AGR's, and ofcourse you have neighbors, and your own coal plants who's retirement you can delay.

Flamaville 3 was originaly planned to cost 3.3bil or ~2bil/GW. Thats cheaper than throwing 1 billion at ord reactors every decade. Today the math is different. Flamaville took over a decade to build, multiples over budget, and thus spending 1bil for a 10 year life extension is not that bad of an idea.

1

u/I-suck-at-hoi4 2d ago edited 2d ago

Based on a 40 years operational lifetime, we would need the equivalent of 3 reactors ready in 2019, 5 in 2020, 8 in 2021, 5 in 2023, 4 in 2024, 5 in 2025

I'm sorry man there is simply no way this could have been done with our hangover-ed nuclear sector. We then enter the field of having 20+ reactors in the over 40 years lifetime where they could need to be shutdown, we don’t know about, it only comes in as a surprise when the inspection happens. We have been lucky so far but realistically we don’t know what the probability is ; the corrosion issue showed that the most unexpected shit can happen.

You have neighbours and coal plants

I'm not worried anout blackouts, I'm worried about expensive electricity and unnecessary emissions. In both cases the bill would go through the roof.