PARIS — The troubled Olkiluoto 3 nuclear plant in Finland will probably not start operating before 2016, the power utility behind the plant said Monday, another delay to a project that is already four years overdue.
The Finnish utility for which the plant is being built, Teollisuuden Voima, known as TVO, said recent progress reports received from the plant supplier, the Areva-Siemens consortium, suggested that a previous forecast of a 2014 start was unlikely to be met.
A failure to gain timely regulatory approval for the reactor’s digital instrumentation and control equipment has also delayed the start of operations, TVO said. The International Atomic Energy Agency describes so-called IC equipment as “the nervous system” of a nuclear facility, providing operators with a way to monitor operations and respond to developments.
Areva, the French nuclear company, and Siemens, the German industrial conglomerate, are building a giant 1,600-megawatt facility, big enough to supply 10 percent of Finland’s electricity needs, on an island in the Baltic Sea. The project was to have been finished in 2009.
TVO said it had asked the consortium “to update the overall schedule and provide a new confirmation for the completion date.” The company is battling the builders over who will ultimately bear responsibility for the cost overruns. The case is in arbitration at the International Chamber of Commerce.
The Areva-Siemens consortium fired back, saying in a statement that both the French and British nuclear safety authorities had already largely signed off on the equipment, and blaming TVO for the delays.
“Over the course of the past year, the consortium has asked for significantly more active cooperation from TVO in order to obtain the final approval of the detailed IC architecture,” the statement said. “The Areva-Siemens consortium regrets that TVO continues to not fulfill its obligations to allow for the project to advance properly.”
On completion, the Olkiluoto plant, employing a new-generation European pressurized reactor, will be among the most powerful nuclear facilities ever built. A second E.P.R. plant, being built in Flamanville, France, for EDF, is also significantly over budget.
There are, as yet, no examples of the new reactor type working anywhere in the world, but there are two such plants under construction in China, at a site in Taishan, Guangdong Province; the consortium noted Monday that construction at Taishan “is advancing twice as fast as the Finnish project.”
Jouni Silvennoinen, a TVO spokesman, declined to comment on what the final cost of the plant was likely to be or how much it was now over budget. As a privately held company, TVO does not have to make such information available to the stock market. Mr. Silvennoinen said the announcement Monday had been necessary to meet disclosure obligations to the Nordic electricity market.
Mr. Silvennoinen said a visitor to the site would see what appeared to be a completed power plant, with about 75 percent of the installation work at the nuclear reactor finished and most of the major equipment installed. The turbine facilities, the other half of the facility, are essentially finished, he said, “and just waiting for the steam to come from the reactor.”
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/business/global/finnish-nuclear-plant-wont-open-until-2016.html?partner=rss&emc=rss