Cruas nuclear power plant

Cruas nuclear power plant
Cruas nuclear power plant
location
Coordinates	44 ° 38 '2 "  N , 4 ° 45' 14"  E Coordinates: 44 ° 38 '2 "  N , 4 ° 45' 14"  E
Country:	France
Data
Owner:	EDF
Operator:	EDF
Project start:	1978
Commercial operation:	April 29, 1983
Active reactors (gross):	4 (3,824 MW)
Energy fed in in 2006:	23,241 GWh
Energy fed in since commissioning:	513,867 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 nuclear power plant Cruas is located in the French commune of Cruas in the region Auvergne Rhône-Alpes in the department Ardèche . The nuclear power plant , which consists of four pressurized water reactors , is located about 15 kilometers from Montélimar on the right bank of the Rhone .

Key data

The 148 hectare nuclear power plant area employs around 1250 people. The operator of the nuclear power plant is the French company Électricité de France (EDF). The cooling of the reactor blocks is carried out with four cooling towers and the water taken from the Rhône.

The four pressurized water reactors have a net capacity of each 915  megawatts  (MW) and a gross capacity of 956 MW. The total installed capacity is 3,824 MW, making the nuclear power plant one of the larger in France. Every year it feeds an average of 24.3 billion kilowatt hours into the public power grid and thus supplies around five percent of French electricity consumption and 40 percent of the Rhône-Alpes region.

history

The four cooling towers of the power plant

Cruas nuclear power plant at night

Construction of the first reactor block began on August 1, 1978, and went into operation on April 29, 1983. In 1978 and 1979, the construction of three more reactor blocks began, the last of which was commissioned on October 27, 1984.

In 1991 the EDF, Framatome and the conseil général de l'Ardèche decided to have a painting with the theme "Ecology" created on the northern cooling tower. 9 mountaineers created the 155 m high and 12500 m² large mural in around 3 months based on a design by the French painter Jean-Marie Pierret. It took around 8,000 working hours and 4,000 liters of paint. The picture with the name Aquarius shows a child who pours water from a shell onto a glass pyramid and is supposed to symbolize the meaning of air and water. The painting was inaugurated on December 16, 1991.

Security and incidents

• During the night from December 1st to December 2nd, 2009, Unit 4 of the nuclear power plant was shut down due to a fault in the cooling system and the internal emergency plan was triggered. According to the operator, the reason for this was vegetable waste in the Rhône, which was caused by heavy rainfall and blocked the cooling water supply. The incident was classified by the French nuclear regulatory authority Autorité de sûreté nucléaire (ASN) as a major incident in INES category 2.

Data of the reactor blocks

The Cruas nuclear power plant has a total of four blocks :

Reactor block	Reactor type	net power	gross power	start of building	Network synchronization	Commercialization of essential operation	switching off processing
Cruas 1	Pressurized water reactor	915 MW	956 MW	08/01/1978	04/29/1983	04/02/1984	(Planned for 2024)
Cruas 2	Pressurized water reactor	915 MW	956 MW	11/15/1978	09/06/1984	04/01/1985	(Planned for 2025)
Cruas 3	Pressurized water reactor	915 MW	956 MW	04/15/1979	05/14/1984	09/10/1984	(Planned for 2024)
Cruas 4	Pressurized water reactor	915 MW	956 MW	10/01/1979	10/27/1984	02/11/1985	(Planned for 2025)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Power Reactor Information System of the IAEA : "France (French Republic): Nuclear Power Reactors" (English)
2. ↑ Jean-Marie Pierret . The mirror 51/1991. December 16, 1991. Retrieved December 4, 2009.
3. ↑ Centrale nucléaire de Cruas arrêt à titre préventid de l'unité de procduction n ° 4 ( French , PDF) Electricité de France. December 2, 2009. Retrieved on December 4, 2009.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ^ Evangelia Petit: Levée du plan d'urgence internal à la centrale nucléaire de Cruas (Ardèche) ( French ) Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire. December 2, 2009. Archived from the original on December 5, 2009. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved December 4, 2009. 
5. ^ Reactor accident: nuclear power plant taken off the grid due to cooling problem - politics . Star . December 3, 2009. Retrieved December 4, 2009.

See also

• List of nuclear facilities in France
• List of nuclear power plants

Web links

Commons : Cruas nuclear power plant  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• The nuclear power plant on the side of the operator