[Video] Looking back at 2025 on the Penly EPR2 construction site

Launched in July 2024, the preparatory works at the Penly site saw a marked acceleration throughout 2025. On his LinkedIn account, Frédéric Hennion, Project Director for the Penly EPR2 programme, has shared an overview of the work carried out to prepare the site for the world’s first pair of EPR2 reactors.

A colossal effort is unfolding along the Normandy coastline. At the end of January 2026, Frédéric Hennion published a video on LinkedIn retracing the key milestones of the preparatory works completed in 2025. Over the past year, “team mobilisation intensified, with more than 1,000 people now working on site every day, and major progress on preparatory works that are now clearly visible,” he emphasised.

Between the reshaping of the cliff, involving the excavation of one million cubic metres of chalk, the construction of a cofferdam body using 200,000 tonnes of rock armour, and the demolition of 57,000 cubic metres of concrete, the project is progressing at pace. “More than 100 different highly skilled professions will ultimately be involved in this project, at the forefront of technology (civil engineering, metallurgy, logistics, testing, nuclear fuel cycle engineering, etc.),” EDF also recalls on its website.