The French-designed Olkiluoto 3 EPR nuclear reactor, which began operating in Finland in April, was shut down on Sunday evening due to a technical problem, its operator TVO announced.
“Electricity production at OL3 was interrupted on Sunday evening, November 19th, due to a fault in the turbine island,” TVO wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
The operator is investigating the causes of this shortage, he added, stating that he does not know when production will resume.
The Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor on the southwest coast of Finland, built by the French group Areva together with the German Siemens group, was put into operation in mid-April after 18 years, that is, 14 years behind the original program.
With an output of 1,600 megawatts, it is the most powerful operating nuclear reactor in Europe and supplies 14% of Finland’s electricity.
Like many other EPR projects, it was marred by countless delays and enormous additional costs, which were one of the main causes of Areva’s industrial dismantling.
The energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine has revived nuclear energy, with its excellent carbon footprint, as an alternative to fossil fuels, including Russian gas.