nuclear-news

Pump malfunction causes shutdown at Flamanville nuclear reactor

EDF halts Flamanville 1 nuclear reactor over pump malfunction    https://www.euronews.com/2019/02/04/edf-halts-flamanville-1-nuclear-reactor-over-pump-malfunction,   04/02/2019 -PARIS (Reuters) – French utility EDF said its 1,300 megawatts (MW) Flamanville 1 nuclear reactor was disconnected from the power grid on Sunday following in an unplanned outage due to a malfunction of a pump in the secondary circuit of the reactor.

EDF said the reactor was disconnected safely in order to allow technical teams to carry out repair works on one of the two pumps supplying water to the secondary circuit.

The reactor in the north of France restarted production on Jan. 27 after a prolonged outage for its third 10-year overhaul since April 2018.

EDF said it informed nuclear safety authority ASN about the incident which had no impact on other facilities.

The reactor is expected to resume electricity production on Feb. 8

Power production was halted at the Flamanville 2 reactor, which has a similar capacity, on January 10 for its third decennial upgrade. The reactor is expected back online on July 10.

(Reporting by Bate Felix; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta

February 4, 2019 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | France, safety