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EDF hikes Flamanville plant cost by €1.5B, plans to dispatch repair robots

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EDF hikes Flamanville plant cost by €1.5B, plans to dispatch repair robots

French utility Electricité de France SA's Flamanville nuclear power plant, under construction in northern France, will cost €1.5 billion more than previously expected, with the total expenditure now estimated at €12.4 billion, the company said on Oct. 9.

The cost hike follows an order to repair faulty welds at the project from France's nuclear power watchdog ASN in June.

As a result, fuel loading at the plant will be delayed until the end of 2022. EDF had previously predicted the reactor would load fuel at the end of 2019 and start commercial operation in 2020. It was originally supposed to start producing power in 2012, and expected costs for the project have ballooned since, from initially €3.3 billion.

To repair the welds, EDF wants to use remote-operated robots, designed to conduct "high precision operations" inside the piping. "The aim is to qualify this scenario with validation by the ASN by the end of 2020," the utility said. After that, repair works will start.

As a backup plan, EDF also suggests "extraction and realignment works" to fix the welds. That option is at this stage a "fall-back solution" and EDF did not lay out a timeline for it.

EDF shareholders reacted negatively to the news, sending the utility's share price to its lowest level since September 2017. "In 2019, EDF is the worst performing utility in our Southern European coverage," analysts from Bernstein wrote in a note following the announcement. "These further delays confirm our view that recent weakness and overall stock price underperformance is justified."

Delays of European Pressurized Reactors

The Flamanville project is one of three next-generation European Pressurized Reactors under construction in Europe. Another is EDF's Hinkley Point C plant in the U.K., the predicted cost of which EDF also hiked last month, to as much as £22.5 billion.

The third project, Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj's Olkiluoto project in southwest Finland, is already more than a decade behind schedule. The plant is being built by Framatome, an engineering and construction firm majority-owned by EDF. Construction started in 2005 and cost estimates have since increased.