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“Faulty design in Areva’s reactor”

Paris: French nuclear giant Areva’s Evolutionary Power Reactor or EPR (sometimes referred to as the European Pressurised Reactor), for which India has already placed two firm orders, has a faulty design and could post major safety problems, nuclear watchdog agencies in France, Britain and Finland warned earlier this week. Areva’s shares tumbled on the markets as a result.

In a rare joint statement, nuclear safety bodies in France, Britain and Finland on Monday ordered the company to modify the safety features on its EPRs due to insufficient independence between the day-to-day systems and the emergency systems.

“In carrying out individual assessments, we have all raised issues regarding the EPR control and instrumentation systems,” said France’s ASN, the U.K.’s HSE and Finland’s STUK, adding that companies licensed to build the EPR, or Areva, are “in the process of addressing” these issues. Commenting on what they see as a potential design flaw in the EPR, the agencies said the day-by-day control systems of the reactor were too closely entwined with emergency safety systems.

“Independence is important because, if a safety system provides protection against the failure of a control system, then they should not fail together,” the British, French and Finnish agencies’ joint statement said.

The issues centre primarily on ensuring the adequacy of the safety systems used to maintain control of a plant if it goes outside normal conditions, and their independence from the control systems used to operate the plant under normal conditions, the three regulators said.

Areva said on Monday it was in talks to modify the design of the EPR plants before the end of the year and insisted the safety of the EPR plants was not in question. A company spokeswoman said Areva was working with regulators to provide them extra information. If there were to be changes they would be “adaptations,” since the EPR is in a “perfectly normal certification process,” she said.

EDF, which operates all of France’s 19 nuclear power plants, said on Tuesday it had been asked to conduct a closer study of secondary systems at its Flamanville EPR reactor and would respond by the year-end.

The EPR reactor under construction in France has already seen substantial delays and cost estimates have soared and critics, especially from the left and Green parties say the design has not been fully thought through because the company was in too much of a hurry to commercialise the reactor and beat the competition.

France plans to build more EPR reactors and Areva, which is a keen competitor to Japanese-owned Westinghouse (formerly an American company), has been on a huge export drive to push the EPR. Any delay, however, could cost France its headstart in what will become a very competitive market to supply the 21st century’s first new generation of plants, with Japanese, Russian, Chinese and South Korean firms in the running.

Areva has started building two EPRs in China’s Guangdong province and in January President Nicolas Sarkozy gave his approval for the construction of a second EPR plant in France. Areva has also joined hands with petroleum giant Total and the French energy company GDF Suez in a consortium to bid build at least four nuclear power reactors in the United Arab Emirates.

The design problems are a blow to Areva and French Prime Minister Francois Fillon played down the concerns, which have hit the share price of Areva’s non-voting stock. Non-voting shares in Areva closed 3.9 per cent lower at € 8.75 the day the news broke. “The management has the confidence of the state. There is no Areva problem,” Prime Minister Fillon said in an interview with the daily Le Monde. “We are in the process of building new generation reactors. It is absolutely normal that there is a debate. The EPR technology has not been called into question. There needs to be extreme rigour in terms of safety. I have no doubt that the problems raised by the Authority will be resolved and that French reactors will be among the world’s best and safest.”

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