Temelín nuclear power plant
| Temelín nuclear power plant | ||
|---|---|---|
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| location | ||
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| Coordinates | 49 ° 10 '55 " N , 14 ° 22' 53" E | |
| Country: |
 Czech Republic
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| Data | ||
| Owner: | ČEZ, as | |
| Operator: | ČEZ, as | |
| Project start: | 1981 | |
| Commercial operation: | June 10, 2002 | |
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Active reactors (gross): |
2 (2026 MW) | |
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Construction discontinued (gross): |
2 (1944 MW) | |
| Energy fed in in 2010: | 13,152.96 GWh | |
| Energy fed in since commissioning: | 100,724 GWh | |
| Website: | Homepage | |
| Was standing: | May 17, 2011 | |
| The data source of the respective entries can be found in the documentation . | ||
The nuclear power plant Temelín (Czech Jaderná elektrárna Temelín ; abbr. JETE , more rarely JET or ETE ) near Temelín is in terms of power with 2,026 MW , the largest power plant in the Czech Republic . The construction of two more reactors was planned, but was rejected by the operator in April 2014 because it was not economical.
Location
The power plant is located near the town of Temelín , 24 km north of České Budějovice in the Czech region of South Bohemia , 50 km from the Austrian and 60 km from the German border. The area of the power plant is 1.45 km², of which 1.23 km² is fenced. The power plant is connected to the rail network via the Číčenice – Týn nad Vltavou railway line.
The area was suitable as a site for the construction of a nuclear power plant in many ways: the water requirements of the turbines and the cooling system can be covered by the proximity to the Vltava (5 km to the west) and the specially built Hněvkovice dam . It is high up (500 m above sea level ), so there is no risk of flooding. The terrain is geologically stable and seismically calm ( Bohemian mass ).
The Temelín power plant is located in the south-west of the country. From an economic and energetic point of view, regions that are far away from other power plants (especially the coal-fired power plants in Northern Bohemia ) can be supplied more easily .
history
Construction of the power plant
1979-1980 the decision was made to build a power plant, consisting of four VVER-1000/320 - pressurized water reactors should be. Construction began in March 1987. In 1990, the new government of Prime Minister Marián Čalfa decided to reduce the project and only complete two reactor blocks. This was followed by a reassessment of the facility. Since the Soviet reactor design was not 100% compatible with the western norms in reactor construction, numerous components had to be redesigned because the Czech government put forward an international tender for the project.
The project has been reviewed several times by the IAEA and found to be feasible , subject to some changes, such as the installation of a modern digital security system or the installation of a power plant simulator. The US company Westinghouse was commissioned to carry out the project . From July 5, 2000, the first block was prepared for commissioning. It was put into operation for the first time on October 9, 2000, and the second unit on April 8, 2003. In the years 2000–2005 there were 15 faults in the NPP (level 1, lowest level according to INES ).
After a tendering procedure, the operator ČEZ signed a contract with the Russian company TWEL on May 16, 2006 for the delivery of the nuclear fuel from 2010. At this point in time, the previous contract with the American company Westinghouse expired. ČEZ is already purchasing the fuel for the Dukovany nuclear power plant from TWEL .
Expansion plans
Since the end of 2007, the energy company ČEZ has been planning to build two more reactors. The reason for this is that there could be energy problems in the next few years and the expansion of Temelín is the cheapest solution. From September 22nd to October 11th, 2008 the cross-border preliminary environmental impact assessment ( EIA for short ) took place in Bavaria and Saxony in accordance with the Espoo Convention . The EIA provides for the construction of two reactors with an output between 1000 and 1600 MW. The anti-nuclear officer of Austria, Radko Pavlovec, criticizes the reactor construction lines that are being considered for the project, as none of these lines has already been tested in operation. At the beginning of August 2009, the tendering process for the construction of the reactor blocks was opened. Environmental groups from Austria, Bavaria and the Czech Republic hope to be able to prevent the expansion of the facility through protests against a repository in the Czech Republic.
In May 2013, the Czech Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek expressed doubts about the economic viability of the expansion. Under the current circumstances, the expansion is "an extremely risky investment from an economic point of view," which means that the certainty that the construction will also pay for itself has decreased. Accordingly, the future operator, the energy company ČEZ , had doubts about the profitability and therefore requested a state guarantee. This should cover the difference between the electricity production costs of the power plant and the market prices, if the power plant cannot produce at market prices and, according to Kalousek, could cost the state dearly. Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg also called for a recalculation of profitability. While electricity prices on the exchange fell significantly, new security measures as a result of the Fukushima nuclear disaster made the development of power plants more expensive. Prime Minister Petr Nečas and Economy Minister Martin Kuba criticized these statements and spoke out in favor of the new building. In July 2013, the Czech government put the plans on hold.
In April 2014, the operator ČEZ also declared the expansion plans to be over and canceled the three manufacturers Westinghouse , Areva and a Russian-Czech consortium. The project does not pay off, especially after the Czech government had previously ruled out subsidies in the form of feed-in tariffs above the market price.
Technical specifications
On the approximately 125 hectare area of the nuclear power plant, there are general facilities such as the administration building, the training or education building, the workshops and the safety center, as well as numerous facilities that are necessary for the operation of such a plant. For example, there are buildings for cooling water treatment, warehouses and 4 cooling towers with a height of 155 m each and a diameter of 130 m.
In the event of any malfunctions, a. the emergency power supply , consisting of diesel generators, a fire protection station and its own polyclinic .
The reactor building
The heart of the power plant is formed by two units that are operated separately from each other. Each block consists of a reactor building and a machine building.
The reactor buildings can only be reached via safety bridges and each contain a control room . A block manager and two operators work around the clock in each block control room.
In each reactor building there is also the so-called containment with a wall thickness of 1.2 m, an inner diameter of 45 m, a height of 38 m and an 8 mm thick steel lining. The containment is hermetically sealed and contains the entire active part of the power plant, i.e. the reactor and all associated systems as well as the entire primary circuit.
The two pressurized water reactors of the power plant are of the type WWER 1000/320 and each have a thermal output of 3000 MW . According to the operator ČEZ , all safety-relevant facilities in the reactor building are available with triple redundancy .
The live steam coming from the reactor buildings is passed through a turbine in the respective engine room . Overall, a capacity of around 1013 MW can be achieved per block. An electrical voltage of 24 kV is generated in turbo generators , which is then transformed to 400 kV and fed to the Kočín switchgear, two kilometers away .
reliability
The operating data of the reactors in Temelín are published in the IAEA's Power Reactor Information System . The "Operating Factor" documents the share of the operating time with power feed in the total duration of a year: both reactors are far more often than other modern pressurized water reactors are not available for power generation. Block 1 achieves an average operating factor of 63.14% over its total operating time, block 2 an operating factor of 76%. The level of use of the nuclear power plant is therefore roughly comparable to the German Biblis nuclear power plant (Block A: 68%, Block B: 73%). Other modern pressurized water reactors such as the Korean OPR-1000, the Canadian Candu 6 or the German convoy achieve operational levels of around 90%.
Resistance to the power plant
The construction and operation of the power plant caused a large number of protests and a temporary deterioration in the political climate between the Czech Republic and neighboring Austria.
Protests from the Czech side
Right at the beginning of the preparatory work, the first protests began, which were primarily of an individual nature and were directed against uncompensated house demolitions and financial disadvantages. According to a survey carried out in České Budějovice in 1987 , the majority of citizens criticized the lack of information about the power plant construction. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, environmental impact assessments were required by law for building projects, but the government takes the position that the power plant had already been approved in 1986 and therefore no EIA is necessary. After protests in the Czech Republic, the EIA was also applied to the nuclear power plant as part of the Melker Protocol. In the years after 1998 there were several organized protests on the Czech side, initiated by various citizens' groups. In 1991, on the fifth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster , the biggest action took place: the organizations “Children of the Earth” from Prague, “South Bohemian Mothers” and the “Budweiser Bund der Naturschützer” organized a march from Týn nad Vltavou to the construction site. In a signature campaign in 2000, 70,000 signatures were collected for holding a referendum on the nuclear power plant, but there was no parliamentary vote on the issue.
According to opinion polls, power plant construction on the Czech side was supported by at least half of the population at all times; in 2000, for example, the approval rate was 71 percent.
Protests from the Austrian side
The critical attitude towards nuclear power in Austria goes back to the vote on the commissioning of the already completed Zwentendorf nuclear power plant (1978) and was significantly reinforced by the Chernobyl disaster (1986). As a result, the concerns of the population about the power plant close to the border and nuclear contamination in the event of an accident were taken up or exploited by political parties. There were border blockades, protest marches and in 2001 the FPÖ organized a referendum “Veto against Temelin”; the latter was signed by 900,000 people. The topic was linked to the Czech Republic's admission to the EU, which took place at the same time and was strongly supported by Austria. In order not to endanger the EU enlargement , the "Melker process" was initiated, which should solve questions and problems around the Temelín nuclear power plant. The Czech Republic and nine other states of the former Eastern Bloc joined the EU on May 1, 2004.
Milker protocol
In the "Melker Protocol" (often imprecisely called " Melker Agreement" ) on negotiations between the Austrian Federal Government and the Czech Government, conditions for permanent operation of Temelín were formulated in 2001 - mainly an environmental impact assessment of Temelín according to European guidelines and better information for the Austrian Federal Government ( especially with INES -1 faults). Originally, the Melker Protocol was to be included in the Czech Republic's accession treaty to the EU and thus anchored at EU level; however, this was refused by the UK . The protocol thus remained a bilateral agreement between Austria and the Czech Republic. When full operations began in Temelín in 2006, a motion was passed at the request of the Upper Austrian MPs in the National Council, which called on the government to bring an international lawsuit against the Czech Republic for non-compliance with the protocol. It emerged that the government had no legal remedies to bring such a lawsuit.
Protests by the state of Upper Austria
The Austrian state of Upper Austria borders among other things on South Bohemia . Due to the proximity to the Temelín nuclear power plant, the provincial government of Upper Austria has been resisting this facility for years, which it describes as a "risk reactor" .
Expert opinion 2013
In August 2013 Dieter Majer (head of the “Safety of Nuclear Facilities” department in the German Federal Environment Ministry until his retirement in 2011) finished a paper entitled Possible weak points in the primary circuit of the Czech Temelin 1 nuclear power plant (prepared on behalf of Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen parliamentary group). The report shows that welds on the reactor pressure vessel (they have to withstand 348 ° C and 160 bar; neutron radiation during operation makes the steel more and more brittle over time) were not properly or inconsistently documented. The report is based on a testimony of an allegedly improperly corrected pipe connection. It shows that the safety of possibly incorrectly executed weld seams (in this case, for example, no complete removal of the heat-affected zone of a previous seam) cannot be guaranteed by subsequent testing and that such parts must be completely replaced in case of doubt Temelín, however, was not considered necessary by the Czech nuclear regulator.
In 2013, Sylvia Kotting-Uhl summarized in a communication in relation to the report that a decision had to be made on the basis of supplementary weld documentation or inspections as to whether welded parts had to be replaced.
Data of the reactor blocks
The Temelín nuclear power plant has two blocks , two more blocks have not been completed:
| Reactor block | Reactor type | net power |
gross power |
start of building | Network synchronization |
Commercial operation | Shutdown |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Temelín-1 | VVER-1000/320 | 1000 MW | 1055 MW | 02/01/1987 | December 21, 2000 | 06/10/2002 | planned for 2042 at the earliest |
| Temelín-2 | VVER-1000/320 | 1000 MW | 1055 MW | 02/01/1987 | 12/29/2002 | 04/18/2003 | planned for 2043 at the earliest |
| Temelín-3 | VVER-1000/320 | 892 MW | 972 MW | 01/01/1985 | originally planned on November 1st, 1995 | originally planned: December 1st, 1995 | Construction stopped on March 1, 1990 |
| Temelín-4 | VVER-1000/320 | 892 MW | 972 MW | 01/01/1985 | originally planned on June 1st, 1997 | originally planned: June 1st, 1997 | Construction stopped on March 1, 1990 |
See also
- Czechoslovakia nuclear program
- List of nuclear power plants
- List of nuclear facilities
- List of VVER
- List of power plants in the Czech Republic
literature
- Milan Znoj: The Temelín nuclear power plant, a difficult subject in Czech-Austrian relations. In: Stefan Karner , Michal Stehlík (Ed.): Austria. Czech Republic. divided - separated - united, contribution volume and catalog of the Lower Austrian State Exhibition 2009. Schallaburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-901661-28-0 .
Web links
Wikinews: Incident in Temelín - message- Temelín Nuclear Power Plant , official website of the operator ČEZ (English)
- Plague: Temelin (Czech Republic)
- Procedure for the environmental impact assessment of the Temelin nuclear power plant (Czech Republic) europaticker September 21, 2008
- Supervisory authority with current news (English)
- About Temelín and Dukovany (Czech)
- Minutes of the negotiations between Austria and the Czech Republic from Melk (PDF, 79 kB)
- Areva, How safe is Temelín (PDF, 245 kB)
- "Increased measured values in Temelin" after an incident on June 26, 2015 - ORF.at
- "All clear after incident in Temelin" - Mittelbayerische Zeitung of July 8, 2015
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.je-temelin-dukovany.cz/je-temelin-lokalita.htm (Czech)
- ↑ zememeric.cz ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Výroční zpráva SÚJB 2005 , Annual Report 2005 (Czech, PDF file)
- ↑ Temelín buys nuclear fuel from the Russian TVEL ( Memento of the original from October 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) 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.
- ^ Report of the TAZ from March 10, 2008 on the construction of units 3 and 4
- ↑ europaticker - documents for cross-border public participation are available. Europaticker environmental reputation, accessed on September 21, 2008 .
- ↑ Temelin: selection procedure announced ORF, August 4, 2009.
- ^ Debate about the expansion of Temelin in Prague . In: Deutschlandradio . May 29, 2013. Retrieved May 29, 2013.
- ^ Finance minister Kalousek doubts the efficiency of the expansion of Temelín . In: Radio Prague . May 27, 2013. Retrieved May 29, 2013.
- ↑ Prague puts the expansion of the Temelin nuclear power plant on hold - because of electricity prices . In: industrial magazine . July 23, 2013. Accessed July 23, 2013.
- ↑ Temelin nuclear power plant will not be expanded . In: Salzburger Nachrichten . July 22, 2013. Retrieved July 23, 2013.
- ^ Off for new reactors in Temelín . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . April 10, 2014. Retrieved April 10, 2014.
- ^ Power Reactor Information System , the IAEA
- ↑ Temelin Block 1 in the PRIS
- ↑ Temelin Block 2 in the PRIS
- ^ IAEA - Nuclear Power Reactors in the World - 2010 Edition - Vienna 2010.
- ↑ Milan Znoj: The Temelín nuclear power plant, a difficult subject in Czech-Austrian relations. In: Stefan Karner , Michal Stehlík (Ed.): Austria. Czech Republic. divided - separated - united, contribution volume and catalog of the Lower Austrian State Exhibition 2009. Schallaburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-901661-28-0 .
- ↑ Information on the press conference with Provincial Councilor Rudi Anschober July 24, 2009 p. 2. (PDF; 1.1 MB)
- ↑ swp.de
- ↑ pdf (21 pages)
- ↑ Type WWER1000 , see there
- ↑ https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/bruechige-reaktoren-101.html Jürgen Döschner on Westdeutscher Rundfunk on November 24, 2016
- ↑ Sylvia Kotting-Uhl (nuclear policy spokeswoman for the GREEN parliamentary group): Communication from September 9, 2013
- ↑ Power Reactor Information System of the IAEA : "Czech Republic: Nuclear Power Reactors" (English)
