France's delayed nuclear plant goes live

French state-owned energy company EDF has begun producing energy at the country's first newly-built nuclear power plant in a quarter of a century.

On Monday night, the company announced that 12 years behind schedule, the reactor known as Flamanville 3 on the northern coast of Normandy was due to experience its first chain reactions overnight. If the plant, the country's 57th so far, operates as hoped, it could be connected to the national grid by the end of the year.

The news will be welcomed by President Emmanuel Macron, who in early 2022 said he wanted to see as many as 14 new reactors built to make the country carbon neutral by 2050 and end its reliance on fossil fuels.

"What our country needs ... is the rebirth of France's nuclear industry," he said, calling the decision to commit to nuclear power a "choice of progress, a choice of confidence in science and technology".

Although Macron won a second term of office as president a few months after making that announcement, he has since lost control of the national assembly, a situation which was not resolved by an election this summer, which could mean that the proposed new projects take even longer to be made reality.

Various factors contributed to the delay of the new reactor, including design complexity and a skills shortage caused by a global downturn of the nuclear industry meaning that many specialist workers moved away from the sector, and in addition to the delays, Flamanville ended up costing more than four times its initial budget.

Regis Clement, co-head of EDF's nuclear production division, called its belatedly coming into operation "a historic step in this project… our teams are on the starting blocks".

The company has also revised its estimate for the country's nuclear power output this year, after faster than expected maintenance work in the absence of significant weather events in the summer.

From an initial figure of 315 to 345 terawatt hours, EDF now revised France's nuclear power generation for 2024 to reach somewhere between 340 and 360 TWh.

France has been one of Europe's most pro-nuclear energy countries since the early 1970s, when the global oil crisis highlighted the country's dwindling coal supplies and lack of oil or gas reserves.

Having developed the nuclear technology, EDF has been keen to export it and already has contracts to build new reactors in England.

In the mid-1980s, EDF was a major partner in China's first large-scale nuclear power project and was actively involved in the construction of Daya Bay nuclear power station.