Kozloduy nuclear power plant

Kozloduy nuclear power plant
Reactor blocks 5 and 6
location
Coordinates	43 ° 44 '46 "  N , 23 ° 46' 14"  E Coordinates: 43 ° 44 '46 "  N , 23 ° 46' 14"  E
Country:	Bulgaria
Data
Owner:	ME
Operator:	Kozloduy NPP Plc.
Project start:	1967
Commercial operation:	Oct 28, 1974
Active reactors (gross):	2 (2000 MW)
Decommissioned reactors (gross):	4 (1760 MW)
Energy fed in in 2009:	14,218.925 GWh
Energy fed in since commissioning:	430,695.72 GWh
Was standing:	December 31, 2009
The data source of the respective entries can be found in the documentation .

The Kozloduj nuclear power plant (also: Kozloduj or Kozloduy ; Bulgarian Козлодуй ) is the only operational nuclear power plant in Bulgaria . It is located 200 kilometers north of Sofia and five kilometers east of Kozloduy on the Danube . Construction of the nuclear power plant began on April 6, 1970.

history

Control room of block 5

A total of six pressurized water reactors with a total output of 3,760 MW were built at the Kozloduy  site. Four units of the nuclear power plant are of the old Soviet type VVER-440/230 and were decommissioned by the end of 2006 in accordance with the European Union . Units 1 and 2 were shut down at the end of 2002. Units 3 and 4 followed on December 31, 2006, just before Bulgaria joined the EU. The construction of the blocks 5 and 6 is of the newer Soviet type VVER-1000/320 of the third generation. Accordingly, they have containment . Units 5 and 6 together have an output of 1906 MW. These two blocks were modernized in 2007 and converted to western security control technology (Teleperm XS). The EU has approved the "safe storage" of nuclear waste for over 300 years at the site. The repository, which will be built on the neighboring property of the Kozloduy nuclear power plant, is planned to be completed by 2015.

Significance in energy policy

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All six blocks together were able to meet 44% of Bulgaria's electricity needs and allowed the country to export up to 20% of its electricity production. After blocks 3 and 4 have been switched off, this is no longer possible to this extent. For many countries in south-eastern Europe, the shutdown and the associated rise in electricity prices means that they can no longer maintain the electricity supply.

Control room of blocks 1 and 2

In April 2005 the Bulgarian government decided to resume construction of the Belene nuclear power plant , which had been inactive since 1990, to compensate for the shutdown of the four units . In February 2013, with the decision to end the Belene project, the Bulgarian parliament extended the remaining term of the two blocks in Kozloduy and decided to build another one there.

During the gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine and the resulting shortage of natural gas for Bulgaria, President Georgi Parvanov considered restarting the third reactor block in Kozloduy. According to the EU Accession Treaty, Bulgaria has the right to do so in a crisis situation. The third reactor block can be put back into operation within a month, the fourth needs a little more time.

Accidents

Turbine hall of block 5

Turbine hall of blocks 3 and 4

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had certified the facility in 1991 after a three-week inspection in a very poor condition "with a number of safety-relevant defects". In an unofficial request for help from the operations team to the IAEA, it was previously mentioned that the steam generator in the Soviet-designed power plant was in danger of failure.

In 2003, during full load operation, there was a leak in a weld seam in the primary circuit of the 3rd reactor. The emergency cooling started working. In contrast to the more powerful Units 5 and 6 and all western pressurized water reactors, units 1 to 4, which have now been shut down, were able to shut off individual segments of the primary circuit with valves. A shut-off was made so that the water loss could be stopped after a relatively short time.

During the shutdown of the 5th block on March 1, 2006, 22 of the 60 controls got stuck in the upper position after a main coolant pump failure. This happened due to a modified design of the control rods by the Gidropress company . This and the loss of coolant could have resulted in a core meltdown. Boric acid had to be pumped into the reactor to shut down the reactor. The operator originally classified the incident as level 0 on the International Nuclear Incident Rating Scale , but the regulatory authority assigned it to level 2. The incident became known only two months later. Four months later the power plant manager was fired. Gidropress was later accused of not testing the new control rod design. The company argued that similar control rods were already in use in reactors in Russia.

Due to a leak in the cooling circuit, a reactor at the nuclear power plant was shut down in early April 2013.

Fuel rods

In August 2008, accusations by nuclear physicist Georgi Kotev, who is responsible for inspecting the quality of the fuel rods at the power plant, became known that the power plant used low-quality fuel rods with unknown properties. In October 2004, the TWSM type fuel rods were replaced by the TWSA type fuel rods. These new fuel rods did not match those indicated in the documents. The deviations from the documented fuel rod properties were confirmed by the Bulgarian authorities and also by Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev . However, this would not create a security problem, which Western experts deny.

Data of the reactor blocks

The Kozloduy nuclear power plant has a total of six units :

Reactor block	Reactor type	net power	gross power	start of building	Network synchronization	Commercialization of essential operation	switching off processing
Kozloduy-1	WWER-440/230	408 MW	440 MW	04/01/1970	07/24/1974	October 28, 1974	01/01/2004
Kozloduy-2	WWER-440/230	408 MW	440 MW	04/01/1970	08/24/1975	11/10/1975	01/01/2004
Kozloduy-3	WWER-440/230	408 MW	440 MW	10/01/1973	December 17, 1980	01/20/1981	01/01/2007
Kozloduy-4	WWER-440/230	408 MW	440 MW	10/01/1973	05/17/1982	06/20/1982	01/01/2007
Kozloduy-5	VVER-1000/320	953 MW	1000 MW	07/09/1980	11/29/1987	December 23, 1988	(2027)
Kozloduy-6	VVER-1000/320	953 MW	1000 MW	04/01/1982	08/02/1991	12/30/1993

See also

• List of nuclear power plants
• List of power plants in Bulgaria
• List of VVER
• List of accidents in European nuclear facilities

Web links

Commons : Kozloduy nuclear power plant  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Homepage of the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant (Bulgarian)
• Plague: Kozloduy (Bulgaria)
• Spiegel-TV report from 1991

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ORF : Bulgaria denies report on Kozloduy incident  ( 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.  
2. ^ World Nuclear News
3. ↑ Handelsblatt - Electricity bottlenecks after reactor closure - The lights go out in the Balkans, January 17, 2007
4. ↑ welt.de/dpa - No party wants to govern in Sofia, February 27, 2013
5. ↑ Jörg Paas: Gas dispute: Bulgaria worried. In: tagesschau.de. Archived from the original on January 7, 2009 ; Retrieved January 7, 2009 . 
6. ↑ Bulgaria is threatened with Chernobyl, DIE WELT, June 29, 1991
7. ↑ Der Tagesspiegel : At the last minute , April 24, 2006
8. ^ Press release from May 5, 2006 ; IPPNW Germany
9. ↑ Nuclear Monitor 647, June 30, 2006 (English; PDF; 225 kB)
10. ↑ Der Spiegel : Reactor supposed to run with dubious fuel rods , 23 August 2008
11. ^ Deutsche Welle : Suspected corruption - serious allegations against the management of the Bulgarian nuclear power plant Kozloduy , August 13, 2008
12. ↑ Power Reactor Information System of the IAEA : Bulgaria (English)
13. ↑ nuklearforum.ch