France’s Areva to pay 600 mn euros more for Finnish reactor

A new nuclear reactor under construction in Finland will cost a consortium led by French firm Areva another 600 million euros to complete, Finnish energy company TVO said Monday.

TVO, which will operate the plant once it is built, and Areva “reached a consensus regarding the terms of the OL3 EPR project completion” including the payment worth $730 million, the company said.

Sited at Olkiluoto in southeast Finland, the EPR plant has been under construction for almost 16 years, and is set to start feeding power into the grid in February 2022.

Ground was broken in 2004 and the reactor was initially supposed to be finished by 2009, but it has been plagued by delays like similar projects in Britain and northern France.

Now fuelled and almost ready to begin electricity production in October, it will supply almost 15 percent of Finland’s energy at 1,650 megawatts.

“This money won’t go to TVO, it’s money that will be spent on finishing the project,” the Finnish company’s chief executive Jarmo Tanhua told AFP.

TVO said there could be an “additional compensation” from Areva if the start date was delayed again.

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