A consortium in Finland on Monday canceled its contract with Russian giant Rosatom to build a nuclear reactor in the northern Nordic country, citing the impact of the war in Ukraine on the feasibility of the project.
• Read also: Israel slams Lavrov’s comments regarding Hitler
• Read also: After artillery, Russian tanks
“The war in Ukraine has aggravated the risks of the project” located on the shores of the Baltic Sea, justified the Fennovoima consortium, stressing that the subsidiary of Rosatom involved in the project, RAOS Project, had “been unable to mitigate these risks” .
Already fragile since its birth in 2010 and marked by major schedule delays, this third nuclear power plant project in Finland was one of the largest industrial projects involving a Russian group in the European Union.
Fennovoima, two-thirds owned by a consortium of Finnish companies and 34% by Rosatom, also invoked the “significant delays and inability” of Rosatom “to complete” the Hanhikivi-1 reactor site.
Will the Finnish consortium completely abandon the project for a new reactor or look for a new partner?
“It is too early to speculate on the future of the project,” said its president Esa Härmälä during a press conference. The current priority is to cancel the current contract, he said.
Estimated at more than 7.5 billion euros according to Fennovoima, the 1,200 megawatt reactor project is located in Pyhäjoki in northern Finland, regarding a hundred kilometers south of the port city of Oulu.
600 million already invested
Significant preparatory work has already been undertaken on the site, but the final building permit had not yet been granted.
On the eve of the invasion of Ukraine, the Finnish government had already announced that it would reassess the project and conduct a new “risk assessment”.
“We were not subject to any pressure,” assured Mr. Härmälä on Monday.
Russian civil nuclear groups are not currently directly targeted by European sanctions in the face of the war in Ukraine.
But Fennovoima predicted in early April that even the current sanctions “should affect the Hanhikivi-1 project.”
The Finnish consortium, which currently employs 450 people, including 80 at the Pyhäjoki site, has already spent 600 to 700 million euros on the project.
The decision to cancel the contract with Rosatom “is not taken lightly”, underlined Fennovoima.
Finnish Economy Minister Mika Lintilä “welcomed” the consortium’s “clear decision”. “It would have been next to impossible to complete the project,” he said on Twitter.
The latest schedule announced last year by Fennovoima as part of its building permit application aimed to start construction in 2023 and commissioning in 2029.
The decision comes as Finland plans to join NATO and an application in the coming weeks is now “very likely”, according to the Minister for European Affairs.
Finland, one of the European countries which has chosen to continue to invest in the civil atom, currently has four fully operational reactors in two power stations, already supplying around 30% of the country’s electricity.
A fifth, a 1,650 megawatt EPR reactor built by the French Areva, was also commissioned in March at the Olkiluoto site (southwest), with full capacity operation scheduled for September.