Bugey nuclear power plant

Bugey nuclear power plant
Bugey nuclear power plant
location
Coordinates	45 ° 47 '50 "  N , 5 ° 16' 12"  E Coordinates: 45 ° 47 '50 "  N , 5 ° 16' 12"  E
Country:	France
Data
Owner:	EDF
Operator:	EDF
Project start:	1964
Commercial operation:	April 15, 1972
Active reactors (gross):	4 (3,724 MW)
Decommissioned reactors (gross):	1 (555 MW)
Energy fed in in 2006:	25,654 GWh
Energy fed in since commissioning:	645,711 GWh
Website:	Side of the operator
Was standing:	July 22, 2007
The data source of the respective entries can be found in the documentation .

The Bugey nuclear power plant is located in the Bugey region in the southeast of the French department Ain , in the municipality of Saint-Vulbas on the Rhone , 35 kilometers from Lyon .

Key data

The operator of the nuclear power plant is the French company Électricité de France (EDF), which employs around 1,250 people there. The entire power plant area covers 100 hectares . The nuclear power plant with its four reactors in operation and an installed gross capacity of 3,724  MW is one of the larger in France. Every year it feeds an average of 25 billion kilowatt hours into the public power grid and supplies 40 percent of the electricity in the Rhône-Alpes region .

history

Construction of the first nuclear reactor, Bugey-1, began on December 1, 1965. It was put into operation on April 15, 1972. In 1978 and 1979 four more reactor units, Bugey-2 to Bugey-5, went into operation. On May 27, 1994, Bugey-1 was decommissioned.

The first reactor is a gas-cooled UNGG reactor . The reactors 2 to 5 are pressurized water reactors . The reactors are cooled by water from the Rhône in four 128-meter-high cooling towers . In recent years, the plant has been modernized according to safety criteria due to the lack of earthquake safety.

In May 2012, a Greenpeace activist entered the high-security area of ​​the power plant with a motor paraglider and dropped smoke bombs. According to Greenpeace, the action was intended to show the “vulnerability of French nuclear power plants to attacks from the air”.

Between 5 and 20 October 2014, drones were observed in the high security area over seven of the 19 French nuclear power plants. Bugey was also affected. The flying objects were observed by security guards at night, but according to EDF they had no impact on the safety of the facilities. So far it is unclear who was responsible.

At the beginning of 2016, the Swiss canton and the city of Geneva filed a lawsuit against the Bugey nuclear power plant west of the border. They are represented in court by the well-known lawyer and environmental activist Corinne Lepage - in her own words not to frighten France, but to shake it up and its nuclear supervisory authority , the ASN ( Autorité de sûreté nucléaire ), “the rampart for the nuclear Security in France to defend against incredible pressure ”.

safety

In the event of a strong earthquake, the emergency cooling could fail. According to a report by the ASN in October 2002, certain protective functions that ensure the cooling of the reactor blocks could no longer be guaranteed in the event of an earthquake. This is a safety-relevant valve whose functionality is at risk in the event of an earthquake.

An increased number of malformations in newborns occurs in the vicinity of the NPP.

Bugey nuclear power plant and yellow sunflowers

Breakdowns

In April 1984 there was an accident: first there was a voltage drop, then the emergency diesel generators could not be started. A generator stepped in at the last second.

On July 31, 1999, a short circuit occurred in the Bugey-3 reactor caused by the earth fault of an obsolete cable, and a fire broke out. The reactor was shut down using an emergency shutdown.

On June 19, 2017, a fire broke out while work on the insulation on the roof of a building in the nuclear section of reactor block 5.

Data of the reactor blocks

The Bugey nuclear power plant has a total of five blocks :

Reactor block	Reactor type	net power	gross power	start of building	Network synchronization	Commercialization of essential operation	switching off processing
Bugey 1	UNGG reactor	540 MW	555 MW	December 01, 1965	04/15/1972	07/01/1972	05/27/1994
Bugey 2	Pressurized water reactor	910 MW	945 MW	11/01/1972	05/10/1978	03/01/1979	(Planned for 2029)
Bugey 3	Pressurized water reactor	910 MW	945 MW	09/01/1973	09/21/1978	03/01/1979	(Planned for 2019) [obsolete]
Bugey 4	Pressurized water reactor	880 MW	917 MW	06/01/1974	03/08/1979	07/01/1979	(Planned for 2019) [obsolete]
Bugey 5	Pressurized water reactor	880 MW	917 MW	07/01/1974	07/31/1979	01/30/1980	(Planned for 2020)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Power Reactor Information System of the IAEA : "France (French Republic): Nuclear Power Reactors" (English)
2. ↑ Greenpeace activist entert Reaktor , rp-online.de, May 2, 2012, accessed on July 5, 2012
3. ↑ http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/drohnen-ueber-akw-in-frankreich-101.html ( Memento from October 31, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ Deutschlandfunk.de Environment and Consumers , March 7, 2016, Suzanne Krause: The future of Fessenheim (March 8, 2016)
5. ↑ Energy Chronicle - French nuclear power plants not earthquake-proof
6. ^ Bild-Zeitung: France: Baby deformities are being re-examined
7. ↑ After an incident at the Forsmark-1 nuclear power plant near Stockholm, Sweden switched reactors seven minutes before the disaster. Berliner Zeitung, August 4, 2006, accessed on March 23, 2018 . 
8. ↑ Short circuit with fire in Bugey-3. Nuklearforum.ch, according to information from the CNPE, August 16, 1999, accessed on March 23, 2018 . 
9. ↑ L'ASN active son center d'urgence à la suite d'un feu à la centrale nucléaire de Bugey (01). Communiqué de presse. Autorité de sûreté nucléaire, June 19, 2017, accessed June 19, 2017 (French). 
10. ^ Aude Henry: Incendie à la centrale nucléaire du Bugey (Ain): le plan d'urgence a été levé à 19H. franceinfo, June 19, 2017, accessed June 19, 2017 (French). 
11. ↑ EDF's Bugey-5 nuclear reactor restarts after 23-month shutdown (France)

See also

• List of nuclear power plants
• List of nuclear facilities in France
• List of nuclear reactors with the highest annual production

Web links

Commons : Bugey Nuclear Power Plant  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• The nuclear power plant on the side of the operator EDF (French)
• Le site du Bugey - ASN ( Memento of February 10, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) (French)