Europe's largest nuclear reactor starts regular output after 18 years

Helsinki: While three nuclear power plants shut down operations in Germany, Europe’s largest nuclear reactor Olkiluoto 3 (OL3) in Finland finally began regular output on Sunday after nearly 18 years of waiting. The plant will help mitigate some of the energy losses suffered due to Russian cuts. The unit in Finland is expected to meet around 14 per cent of the country’s electricity demand, reducing the need for imports from Sweden and Norway, said OL3’s operator Teollisuuden Voima (TVO).

The new reactor is expected to produce for at least 60 years, TVO said in a statement on Sunday after completing the transition from testing to regular output.

“The production of Olkiluoto 3 stabilises the price of electricity and plays an important role in the Finnish green transition,” TVO Chief Executive Jarmo Tanhua said in the statement.

The construction of the 1.6 gigawatts (GW) reactor began in 2005. It is Finland’s first new nuclear plant in more than four decades and Europe’s first in 16 years.

OL3 first supplied test production to Finland’s national power grid in March last year and was expected at the time to begin regular output four months later, but instead suffered a string of breakdowns and outages that took months to fix.

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Russia’s power exports to Finland ended last May when Russian utility Inter RAO said it had not been paid for the energy it sold, a consequence of the widening gulf between Moscow and Europe over the war in Ukraine.

Russian state export monopoly Gazprom shortly ended shipments of natural gas to the Nordic nation.

With inputs from agencies

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