Olkiluoto III hasn't quite gone according to plan

Finland's fifth nuclear reactor should have been ready to go online this month, but there are still three years' work left to do

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By Heikki Arola
     
      Had everything gone the way it was supposed to, then the suits, scissors, and silk ribbons should be being made ready for the inauguration of the third reactor at the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant on Finland’s west coast.
      But the schedules did not hold up, and according to the current estimates the Olkiluoto III nuclear facility - Finland's fifth reactor - will be completed no earlier than the summer of 2012.
     
In other words, the supposedly four-year stint looks to be lasting a minimum of seven years.
      Over 4,000 people are employed at the construction site of the power plant.
      As the crews labour away in three shifts, there are more than a thousand men at any one time working on the reactor and turbine facilities.
      The annual servicing of the two existing reactors, OL1 and OL2, is also currently taking place, which means that there are an additional thousand workers on site.
     
Last year and the first half of this year have been spent erecting the reactor island, the very core of the facility.
      Because of the extremely tough safety requirements involved, this has primarily meant massive reinforced concrete works.
      Towards the end of this year the actual construction of buildings will gradually abate and the installation of the reactor and turbine machinery can begin.
     
Roughly a third of the site’s workforce comes from Poland.
      Nearly as many Finns are also employed, followed by Germans, Slovakians, French, and Croatians.
      So far employees of no less than 60 different nationalities have been working on the project at one time or another.
      The building site is led by the French company Areva.
      The construction has been slowed down by numerous problems related to the quality of work and parts supplied by subcontractors, but the greatest delays have been caused by the regulatory permits associated with operational safety requirements.
      Currently thirteen per cent of the required documents still lack the stamp of approval of the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority of Finland.
     
At the same time as the schedule has gone west, the power plant’s price has been hiked up quite a bit from the original estimates.
      The construction was supposed to cost EUR three billion, but the three-year delay and other difficulties have caused the final bill to increase at least by one and a half times.
      Furthermore, the buyer of the power plant - the Finnish power company TVO - will miss out on three years’ electricity generating revenue.
     
Nevertheless, TVO has already set its sights on a fourth reactor at Olkiluoto. Last year the municipal council of Eurajoki ruled - by a clear majority - in favour of the new unit.
      So far three electricity companies, namely TVO, Fortum, and Fennovoima, have expressed their interest in constructing the next reactor.
      The Finnish government is likely to decide during the course of the autumn to whom the licence will be granted.
     
During the construction of Olkiluoto’s third nuclear reactor, around 450,000 cubic metres of rock has been quarried. This would be enough to fill that large hole now occupied by the Kamppi Center shopping mall and the Helsinki bus station twice over.
      In all, about 52,000 tons of steel will be used. This equals rather more than 480 kilometres of railway tracks.
     
The roughly 250,000 cubic metres of concrete used in the course of the project would be enough to erect 5,000 average-size apartment dwellings.
      The combined volume of the OL3 buildings is a million cubic metres.
      This equals ten Helsinki Parliament Buildings, or OL1 and OL2 put together.
     
The project began back in 2002, when a slim Parliamentary majority voted in favour of granting a licence to TVO for a fifth Finnish nuclear reactor.
      Construction began in 2005, and Areva promised the plant would be ready for trial operation by May 2009.
     
Areva and TVO are currently at loggerheads over the delays, and suits and countersuits have been filed to a total of several billion euros.
      The entire venture is being watched closely elsewhere, as Finland is in the role of a pathfinder in building a new generation of nuclear plants.
      The difficulties encountered have not gone unnoticed, as a recent New York Times article pointed out.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 16.6.2009


Previously in HS International Edition:
  New York Times highlights "cautionary tale" of Olkiluoto nuclear reactor project (29.5.2009)
  Costs of delay in construction of Olkiluoto III approaching price of new reactor (29.1.2009)
  TVO seeks EUR 2.4 billion in damages for Olkiluoto nuclear reactor delays (28.1.2009)
  Nuclear authority angered by shortcomings in reactor construction (3.11.2008)
  Olkiluoto III start-up delayed again - reactor could go on stream only in 2012 (17.10.2008)

See also:
  The Merry Wives of Olkiluoto (12.12.2006)
  Parliament approves fifth commercial nuclear reactor (24.5.2002)

Links:
  Olkiluoto III (TVO)
  Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant (Wikipedia)

HEIKKI AROLA / Helsingin Sanomat
heikki.arola@hs.fi