"The construction side and installation start up have progressed somewhat slower than was planned," Jouni Silvennoinen, project manager for Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima's (TVO) Olkiluoto 3 project, told Finland's leading daily Helsingin Sanomat.

The European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) plant, which is being built by France's Areva and Germany's Siemens, has fallen more than three years behind its original schedule and the parties have blamed each other for delays and ballooning costs.

"The June 2012 (target) will be difficult to reach, but during 2012 the plant should be fairly close to complete," Silvennoinen said, adding primary components, like the reactor, would likely start being installed in June.

"There are hundreds and thousands of components, hundreds of kilometres (miles) of cable. The same goes for pipes. It will take time," he said.

Environmental group Greenpeace said it did not expect the plant to be operational until 2014, "five years late and 13 years after the parliamentary decision" allowing the construction of more nuclear power plants in Finland.

"If Olkiluoto 3 is not completely ready in 2012, the start-up cannot take place before 2013 and even with Areva's extremely optimistic testing period of half a year, it won't be operational before the summer of 2013," Greenpeace said in a statement.

Finland is currently debating boosting its nuclear energy capacity further, and the government is due to decide this month whether or not to give permits to TVO, Fortum and Fennovoima, each of which wants to build a new reactor.

The government's proposal will go to parliament for debate and approval.

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