EDF prepares for the next stage of system performance testing at the Flamanville EPR, with a view to the fuel loading and the reactor start-up at the end of the 4th quarter of 2018

Work on the Flamanville EPR is progressing in accordance with the timetable announced in September 2015. The system performance tests, which confirm and test how all the EPR circuits are working, began in the 1st quarter of 2017 and will continue until fuel loading and reactor start-up at the end of the 4th quarter of 2018.

Having completed the so-called “chasse en cuve” (vessel flushing operations) during the summer of 2017, the teams are now preparing for two new phases, as part of the system performance tests:

• so-called “cold” tests, which will start in the second fortnight of December 2017,
• so-called “hot” tests, which will start in July 2018.

During the so-called “cold” tests, many operations will be carried out including water tightness tests in the reactor’s primary circuit at a pressure of over 240 bars (higher than the pressure of the circuit when it is operating).

Once these operations have been completed, EDF will move on to the so-called “hot” tests, in order to demonstrate that the installation is working properly. These tests will involve checking the equipment under similar temperature and pressure conditions to those under which it will operate.

More than 1,000 engineers and technicians working for EDF and industry partners have been mobilised to carry out these system performance tests.

EDF confirms the roadmap of the Flamanville 3 project drawn up in September 2015 with a fuel loading and start-up of the reactor at the end of the 4th quarter of 2018 and confirms that the project cost is set at 10.5 Billion Euros¹.

¹ In 2015 Euros, excluding interim interest