Phénix nuclear power plant

Phénix nuclear power plant
Marcoule with Phénix nuclear power plant in the left part of the picture
location
Coordinates	44 ° 8 '36 "  N , 4 ° 42' 42"  E Coordinates: 44 ° 8 '36 "  N , 4 ° 42' 42"  E
Country:	France
Data
Owner:	EDF / CEA
Operator:	EDF / CEA
Project start:	1961
Commercial operation:	December 13, 1973
Shutdown:	February 1, 2010
Decommissioned reactors (gross):	1 (242 MW)
Energy fed in since commissioning:	23,785 GWh
Was standing:	February 1, 2010
The data source of the respective entries can be found in the documentation .

The decommissioned Phénix nuclear power plant is one of the few fast breeder reactors that has been used for commercial power generation and is located on the site of the Marcoule nuclear facility about 30 kilometers north of Avignon in the French region of Occitania in the Gard department on the Rhône .

history

The nuclear power plant was operated by the French companies Électricité de France (EDF) and Commissariat à l'énergie atomique (CEA). The nuclear reactor was a sodium-cooled fast breeder (SNR), a prototype reactor that served as a forerunner for the Superphénix , which was closed after only 10 years of operation due to constant defects and problems .

Construction of the reactor block began on November 1, 1968; it went into operation on December 13, 1973. The nuclear power plant was only operated irregularly from 1990 to 1996; in 1997 it was shut down completely. In February 1998, in the course of the shutdown of the successor Superphénix , it was decided to put Phénix back into operation in order to continue research in the field of fast breeders. On September 9, 1998, the license for power operation was granted again. After a renovation from 1998 to 2003, the nuclear power plant was back in operation in 2004. The power plant was taken offline in March 2009, temporarily shut down in October 2009 and officially shut down on February 1, 2010.

Although Phénix represented the prototype of a new reactor design and consequently only limited experience with this technology was available, it worked more reliably than other similar projects, in contrast to the regular, larger and stronger successor, which after drastic cost increases in construction and operation after numerous incidents up to towards partial collapse of parts of the building was closed after only 10 years of operation. With over 30 years of operation, Phénix, along with the Russian BN-600 , was one of the few successful breeder reactors used for commercial power generation.

Key data

The nuclear reactor was a sodium-cooled fast breeder reactor having a net electric power of 233  megawatts (MW) and a gross power output of 242 MW. The thermal output was 563 MW. The reactor block was cooled with the water removed from the Rhône. In good years of operation, the power plant fed almost a billion kilowatt hours into the public power grid , but on average from 1974 to 2010 it was about a third less.

The reactor was used to generate electrical energy and to research the technology of the fast breeder. The final use was to test the transmutation of radioactive waste. 250 employees were employed, including 60 operators.

Data of the reactor block

The Phénix nuclear power plant had one power plant unit :

Reactor block	Reactor type	net power	gross power	start of building	Network synchronization	Commercialization of essential operation	switching off processing
Phénix	Fast breeder reactor	233 MW	242 MW	11/01/1968	December 13, 1973	07/14/1974	02/01/2010

See also

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

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Power Reactor Information System of the IAEA : "France (French Republic): Nuclear Power Reactors" (English)
2. ↑ Energy chronicle nuclear power plants
3. ↑ Fast Neutron Reactors , World Nuclear Association (English)
4. ↑ ^{a b} Phénix, IAEA
5. ↑ ^{a b} Research Reactor Details - PHENIX (English)