France: repaired nuclear power plant fails security checks. Energy crisis?
Still problems for the French nuclear power plants, which have major problems in returning to service. The Civaux nuclear power plant in central France failed a safety check after a pipe connected to the reactor's cooling system ruptured during testing, state-owned power company EDF said Tuesday.
The accident at the Civaux center, which is out of order for maintenance and testing, risks delaying its return to service at a time when France is concerned about its ability to produce sufficient electricity during the winter.
The plant, the most modern on the French network, was closed in August 2021 after corrosion problems were detected in the welds of the emergency cooling system.
The Civaux incident of November 2 "was by no means a weld that failed," said Regis Clement, deputy head of EDF's nuclear production unit. A pipe connected to the primary cooling system of one of the reactors broke, causing the escape of high-pressure steam and a radioactive "metal object" that was recovered with a robot, Clement added. About 80 cubic meters of wastewater resulting from the leak was recovered without endangering the environment
"There is no risk to the environment or public health," Karine Herviou, deputy head of the French nuclear safety agency, IRSN, told Franceinfo radio.
The discovery of corroded welds in Civaux last August led EDF to shut down 12 reactors built according to the same design to carry out tests. Nearly half of the country's 56 reactors are currently out of service, which means the country will have to purchase electricity from the European electricity market this winter. The return to operation of the Civaux plant was scheduled for January. Clement said it is "too early" to say whether the rupture of the pipe will delay this event.
Under pressure from the government to speed up maintenance work, Clement said Tuesday that EDF aims to have 42 reactors in operation by December 1 and 46 by January 1, up from 30 today. About 500 skilled welders are currently working on the cooling systems, including 100 contractors from the United States and Canada, but evidently this is not enough and France is experiencing major quality control problems.
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Article France: Nuclear power plant repaired fails security checks. Energy crisis? comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/francia-centrale-nucleare-riparata-non-supera-i-controlli-di-sicurezza-crisi-energetica/ on Fri, 11 Nov 2022 11:48:52 +0000.