A jinxed new-generation nuclear reactor for Finland is to begin producing electricity in 2018, nine years late, one of the main partners in the project, Areva of France, said on Monday.

The expected losses arising from delays on construction of the plant, using advanced technology known as EPR, remain at 3.9 billion euros ($5.1 billion), Areva said.

Areva, a French state controlled world leader in nuclear power technology, is building the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) facility at Olkiluoto in Finland together with the private German engineering giant Siemens for Finnish group TVO.

The two sides are in dispute over responsibility for the delays and compensation of several billion euros, and have taken their litigation to arbitration before the international chamber of trade in Paris.

A ruling is expected at the beginning of 2015.

The statement by Areva said that the two construction groups would press on with action to determine who was responsible for the delays and to obtain compensation.

But Finnish electricity group TVO, which commissioned the project, expressed surprise at the length of the new long delay, saying that much of the work had been completed and met very high technical standards, and that the extent of the outstanding work to be done was well known.

For more than a year, Areva and Siemens had refused to give their Finnish TVO a firm timetable for completion of the project.

Areva said in a statement: "The Areva-Siemens consortium has delivered to its client TVO an updated schedule for the Olkiluoto 3 EPR project under which construction will be completed in mid-2016, commissioning will start at this date and operations will start in 2018."

The statement blamed the latest delays on processes for approval of systems for measuring and controlling the facility.

Final approval had been obtained in April this year "giving the consortium a key visibility element to schedule the completion of the project."

But the new timetable depended on cooperation from TVO "as the owner of the plant", the statement said.

Such cooperation was vital, for example, regarding "the review of technical and safety matters" and even more so "during the commissioning phase which is to come".

The statement said that the consortium of Areva and Siemens "continues to pursue its claims in the arbitration procedure concerning responsibility for the delays to the project with the objective to obtain compensation for the losses incurred."

Areva said that other EPR projects in France and in China had made significant progress so far this year.

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AREVA

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