nuclear-news

3 unplanned shutdowns of French nuclear reactors due to corrosion concerns, in the Framatome-designed piping

EDF revealed on Thursday that it will shut down the 1.3 GW Paluel 2, Penly
2 St Alban 2 and Cattenom 1 reactors next year, when no shutdowns were
planned so far, to check whether their auxiliary pipes to the primary
circuit are affected by corrosion. The dates of these shutdowns, which will
occur in the second quarter of 2023, must be published imminently on Remit,
said the deputy director of EDF’s nuclear production department Régis
Clément at a press conference in Paris.

The French group intends to check the rest of these 56 reactors by the end of 2023, or even the beginning of 2024, during the planned shutdowns which will be extended and the ten-year
visits, seven of which are scheduled for the rest of this year, he added.

Earlier on Thursday, EDF on Thursday revised the dates for thirteen
scheduled outages at nuclear power plants in 2022-23 due to
corrosion-related checks and repairs. Mr. Clément also asserted that the
“preponderant” cause of cracks due to corrosion on the auxiliary piping
to the primary circuit of certain reactors in the nuclear fleet was the
design of these circuits, developed by the EDF subsidiary Framatome. “Today
what we have as a clear conviction is that the design [of the auxiliary
circuits] appears to us as a preponderant cause”, he said.

 Montel 19th May 2022

https://www.montelnews.com/news/1322042/corrosion-edf-rvle-les-4-units-quelle-arrtera-en-2023

May 23, 2022 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | France, safety