nuclear-news

Flamanville EPR shut down, no restart date announced

Having just exceeded the 60% power threshold, the Flamanville EPR was shut down as part of its tests but must remain so following a problem.

By Chrismaël Marchand, June 25, 2025, https://actu.fr/normandie/flamanville_50184/lepr-de-flamanville-est-a-larret-pas-de-date-de-redemarrage-annoncee_62823385.html

The Flamanville EPR (Manche) entered the operating phase in May 2024, with the loading of its fuel . Since then, it has validated its first divergence in September 2024 and the coupling to the electricity grid in December 2024. In 2025, it continues this intense start-up phase with a target of full power during the summer of 2025 .

It is even on schedule, it seems, since it reached 60% of its power , at the beginning of June 2025. It is now aiming for the 80% level where it will have to benefit from the approval of the Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection Authority (ASNR).

However, he will have to wait a little longer because unit number 3 of the Flamanville Nuclear Power Production Centre (CNPE) is no longer operating.

Investigation and repair on the agenda

On June 19, 2025, at 7:05 p.m., it was shut down as part of the reactor commissioning tests, which require the reactor to undergo numerous and significant power variations.

Reactor No. 2 is also delayed

On Monday, June 16, reactor No. 2 was disconnected from the power grid, “following the activation of the turbine’s automatic protections,” located in the non-nuclear part of the facility. “We detected an oil leak on a component,” EDF confirmed. “The reactor therefore went into automatic protection mode.” Initially, unit No. 2 was scheduled to restart on the evening of Sunday, June 22. However, repairs are taking longer than expected. A new date has therefore been set for Saturday, June 28. However, there is no guarantee.

“This shutdown allowed adjustment operations to be carried out in the engine room, a non-nuclear part of the facilities,” EDF explained . However, the production unit has still not restarted.

It is kept at a standstill to carry out investigations and adjustments on a protection valve of the main primary circuit.EDF, communications department

No official date has been announced yet. ” We are investigating and making repairs to continue the test session,” EDF concluded

July 1, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology | Leave a comment

What is an EMP?

 June 29, 2025 by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/06/29/what-is-an-emp/

A nuclear electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear detonation could affect billions explains Carlos Umaña in an interview

As a companion piece to Umaña’s article about the April 2025 blackout in Europe and his first fears that nuclear war had begun, we republish this interview from Tendencia in 2019.

In 2017, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) won the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of its decade-long work to ban the atomic bomb.

ICAN is a global alliance whose goal is to raise awareness among people in all countries to pressure their governments to sign a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. The campaign was launched in 2007 and is now active in more than 60 countries.

Carlos Umaña, from Costa Rica, is a member of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), and a member of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

What is a nuclear electromagnetic pulse?

A nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a brief, intense pulse of radio wave that is produced by a nuclear detonation.

Its radius is much greater than the destruction caused by the heat and shock wave of the nuclear weapon. For example, the pulse from an explosion about 100 km high would cover an area of 4 million km2. An explosion about 350 km high could, for example, cover most of North America, with a voltage of a power that is a million times greater than that of a lightning bolt from a thunderstorm. That is, if the detonation of a nuclear bomb is made from a sufficient height, even if there is no such great physical destruction, it could affect the lives of the inhabitants of an entire country or of several countries.

What would be the consequences of detonating a nuclear bomb from a sufficient height?

It would cause extensive disruption of all electrical equipment. Everything within the radius of the EMP wave would cease to function and would literally go dark.

The EMP energy would be absorbed by a large number of metallic objects, including power cables, telephone lines, railroads and antennas. It would be transmitted to computers and electronic equipment. This would directly affect essential circuits for telecommunications, computer systems, transportation networks, etc. In other words, it would affect practically everything to do with technology.

Why talk about humanitarian consequences, if we are talking about technology, not people?

Recently there has been an impetus for the humanitarian nuclear disarmament movement, where there has been talk about how weapons affect people. There is a lot of talk about the direct effects of destruction by heat, blast wave and radiation, the effects of which last for generations and cause a lot of suffering even today.

Today, this issue has become extremely relevant because civilization depends on technology for so many things, including health systems, and so many people would be affected both directly and indirectly, far beyond the catastrophic damage caused by the direct physical elements.

Nuclear bombs have been detonated before, why hasn’t this happened?

Yes, it has. This is known from the havoc they have wreaked at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945) and the 2056 nuclear tests that have been done since then.

The difference between then and now is that our dependence on technology is virtually absolute. If we think about it, almost every aspect of our lives, especially in the urban environment, is tied to technology, both in terms of the electrical devices that take care of more and more of the details of our daily lives, and the global communication and information network that we depend on to function as a society. We’re talking about things from basic telecommunication, to data in the cloud, to the stock market, to digital maps for international flights, and so on.

All cars and planes would be disabled. Police, ambulances and firefighters could not be called. Food could not be distributed, especially in urban centers, nor water. Imagine entire cities without electricity, lights, transportation and food. It would be the end of civilization itself. Modern life as we know it would simply cease to exist.

To what extent are the threats of this happening real?

While North Korea’s arsenal is much smaller than that of the United States, at times of tension between the two countries, the North Korean threat was to detonate a bomb in the U.S. atmosphere to disable a large part of the country.

Read the original interview in Spanish here.

July 1, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology | Leave a comment