PARIS: France’s Areva SA settled a long-running dispute with Finland’s Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) by agreeing to pay 450 million euros ($554 million) for cost overruns and delays at a nuclear reactor it is building with Germany’s Siemens.
Originally planned to begin production in 2009, the Olkiluoto 3 plant in southwest Finland is still not completed. The plant suppliers and TVO had been claiming billions of euros from each other at an arbitration court.
Following the deal, the companies said they would withdraw all ongoing legal actions.
“TVO welcomes the agreement which ensures that the OL3 EPR (European Pressurised Reactor) project continues to have the necessary financial, technical and human resources for the completion and successful start-up of the plant,” TVO President Jarmo Tanhua said in a statement.
Reactor supplier Areva will pay the whole compensation for TVO as Siemens only delivered the unit’s turbine plant.
All parties wanted to find an alternative settlement to the arbitration. This settlement will allow us all to refocus all our resources and energy towards completion of this new EPR,” said Areva SA CEO Philippe Soulie.
He said the company would secure all resources necessary to complete the plant on time.
A turnkey contract for Olkiluoto 3, signed in 2003, fixed the cost of the reactor at 3.2 billion euros. TVO said on Sunday that its overall investment will be around 5.5 billion euros.
Areva-Siemens had been claiming 3.6 billion euros from TVO while the Finnish company had filed a counter-claim of 2.6 billion euros.
By the time of the agreement, TVO had won three partial rulings against Areva-Siemens from the International Chamber of Commerce’s arbitration court.
