Anybody knows why they are building an EPR at Flammanville? After all the reason they always put forward, that it is a demonstration reactor is blatantly false. The reactor in Finland serves this purpose. Too bad they were a year beyond schedule after... a year. As for preserving France's technical know-how, well, are they saying nobody who's currently working in Finland or in China is ever going to work in the field again?
So why do they build it? It can't be to replace France's nuclear plants, who aren't scheduled to be decommissionned before 2020. And I'm not sure that it's worth it, from an economic point of view, to have more than 80% of your electricity coming from nuclear plants. And this makes even less sense when you know that 4 plants are virtually coming online in 2012 with the decommissionning of the enrichment facility which used to take up a lot of power. Rien n'est gratuit en ce bas monde. Tout s'expie, le bien comme le mal, se paie tot ou tard. Le bien c'est beaucoup plus cher, forcement. Celine
To me it seems there are several reasons they build it. The most important, at least a couple of years ago, should be export reasons. Foreigners will be much more happy to buy EPR units if they see the French build them themselves.
Second, while there has been lots of talk about there being surplus baseload capacity on the continent, that seems not to be the case anymore, due to rising demand, German nuclear phase-out and worries about gas imports.
Witness the German plans to build half a dozen (or was it a dozen?) new big coal plants (without CSS, of course).
On top of that we have the total mess that is the UK power situation with a gas production in terminal decline, lots of new gas plants, a swiftly shrinking nuclear share without much hope of life time extensions, lots of coal plants due to close due the EU large combustion plant directive, the list goes on.
If I was going to build a reactor somewhere in France, Flamanville, Gravelines, Paluel or Penly should be the place. But Gravelines already has 6*900 MW, Paluel has 4*1300 MW and Penly has 2*1300 MW, just like Flamanville . Power exports to the UK will be a no-brainer (and EdF has said they'd like to build reactors in the UK too).
Gravelines
Paluel
Penly
Flamanville with EPR mock-up
By the way, the gaseous diffusion enrichment facility at Tricastin used the power of "only" three (3*900 MW) reactors, though there are four at the site in question.
Reactors in the foregorund. The dark buildings in the background is the enrichment plant. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
As for your second argument, I guess you mean that EDF needs the new EPR to either honor its long term contracts with other Europeans countries in the face of rising domestic demand, or to be able to sign new ones in the future. In both cases, these are not the arguments EDF put forward.
For the geographical location, the place where it would make more sense to build a plant is Bretagne, where the average distance from consumer to plant is 300km, as opposed to 80km in the rest of France. But that would mean picking a new site for the plant, basically starting a national debate: EDF would be unable to hide behind weak 'we promote french technology and knowhow' arguments.
So EDF builds plants in France with tacit government approval, exports the energy produced... at which point do we talk about energy policy again? Rien n'est gratuit en ce bas monde. Tout s'expie, le bien comme le mal, se paie tot ou tard. Le bien c'est beaucoup plus cher, forcement. Celine
Consider the Swedish JAS 39 Gripen multirole fighter. Would we have managed to sell a single plane if we hadn't:
1. Bought lots ourselves
and
2. Had our government tell everyone they met what a great plane it is and that they should buy it.
Nope, not a single plane. It's not a coincidence South Africa chose Gripen when they needed a new fighter, considering the strenous Swedish opposition to apartheid.
If EdF doesn't claim they build the plant to generate and sell power, what do they claim? Maybe they want experience to now if they are going to use the EPR as the future standard reactor, instead of for example AP1000?
I can't see why new sites are needed, after all, the Manche sites are good, close to the UK, and it's always cheaper and easier (local opposition etc) to expand a current plant then to build a completely new one.
And building plants and exporting the power seems like a great energy policy to me. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
