Tricastin nuclear power plant

Tricastin nuclear power plant
The four reactors of the Tricastin nuclear power plant
location
Coordinates	44 ° 19 '47 "  N , 4 ° 43' 56"  E Coordinates: 44 ° 19 '47 "  N , 4 ° 43' 56"  E
Country:	France
Data
Owner:	Electricité de France
Operator:	Electricité de France
Project start:	1974
Commercial operation:	Dec. 1, 1980
Active reactors (gross):	4 (3,820 MW)
Energy fed in in 2010:	25,677.22 GWh
Energy fed in since commissioning:	708,169.79 GWh
Was standing:	June 3, 2011
The data source of the respective entries can be found in the documentation .

The Tricastin nuclear power plant is located near Pierrelatte in the Drôme department on the banks of the Donzère-Mondragon Canal on the Rhône between Valence (70 km upstream) and Avignon (65 km downstream). It consists of four largely identical reactors. They are cooled directly by the waters of the Rhône from the Donzère-Mondragon Canal.

Until its closure in 2012, the uranium enrichment plant belonged Eurodif for nuclear plant Tricastin .

history

The four pressurized water reactors commissioned in 1980/1981, each with 915  megawatts of net electrical output, provide around 25  TWh of electricity per year. The uranium enrichment plant consumed around 17 TWh per year (i.e. around 2/3) until it was closed  . A new system is to go into operation there by 2017 (as of 2008) ^[obsolete] , which will only require 50 MW instead of 3 GW.

According to a report by the ASN ( Autorité de sûreté nucléaire , Nuclear Safety Authority) from October 2002, certain precautionary measures for reactor cooling could no longer be ensured in the event of an earthquake .

At times the first French EPR was to be built in Tricastin ; but then the Flamanville site on the English Channel was chosen. The reason given was that it was problematic to cool the reactor in Tricastin, as there are already 14 nuclear reactors on the Rhone . In addition, the French electricity market is more oriented towards the north of France.

On the morning of July 15, 2013, around 20 Greenpeace activists gained unauthorized access to the power plant site and unfurled banners there.

Disruptions

Tricastin nuclear power plant

On September 1, 1980, a reactor block had to be shut down after a pipe containing radioactive waste water burst. According to official information, the leaked wastewater could be collected.

In 1999 a worker in one of the reactor blocks was given permission by a radiation protection officer to do a short job under the reactor vessel. The worker received a carcinogenic dose of around 300 millisieverts within three minutes. The radiation protection officer had previously estimated that the dose was only 70 millisieverts. The case had legal consequences.

From July 12 to 22, 2003, the water temperature of the Donzère-Mondragon Canal repeatedly exceeded the permitted limit of 27 ° C due to the introduction of cooling water from the Tricastin nuclear power plant. Overall, the exceedance lasted over 44 hours, with the temperature reaching up to 28.8 ° C. The Nuclear Safety Authority published this incident on August 1, 2003 on its website.

A fire hazard inspection carried out by the ASN on July 2, 2004 revealed the lack of experience of the employees. It took 37 minutes to take effective action against a possible fire. During this period, the fire that had broken out was becoming too great.

An incident occurred in 2008 at the Eurodif uranium enrichment plant , which is located on the same site as the nuclear power plant, which became known on July 8th. Radioactive liquid escaped into the environment. The water analyzes carried out at the power plant in the course of the incident showed that the approved annual exposure limit was exceeded 100 times. According to IRSN director Jean-Christophe Gariel, the increased radiation exposure is probably due to an earlier incident. The CRIIRAD scientific commission suggested that the contamination originated from an uncovered military uranium dump. 10 days after the accident, an immediate groundwater check was ordered in the vicinity of all French nuclear power plants. Greenpeace France called for the general expansion of groundwater analyzes to include the power plant premises.

Two weeks later on July 23, around 100 people were "slightly contaminated" by radioactive particles. The particles had emerged from the exhaust line of a shutdown nuclear reactor. The incident was rated at level 0 on the eight-point International Rating Scale for Nuclear Events . Since further incidents occurred in July 2008 and these led to investigations on the power plant site, this new accident met with above-average media coverage.

Police officers searched the director's office to find out whether the operator was complying with the applicable safety regulations.

On February 16, 2011, it was found that in more than half of the emergency diesel generators in Units 3 and 4, some individual parts that had been replaced two years earlier could fail prematurely if the diesel was running for a longer period of time. In a test in another NPP, these quality defects turned out to be the cause of total failure of the diesel. In the event of failure of the external power grid and the reserve grid ( emergency power supply ), the Tricastin 3/4 power supply for dissipating the decay heat in the reactor core would not have been secured; in the worst case, it could have led to a core meltdown in both units. INES 2.

On July 2, 2011, there was a fire in a transformer.

On October 18, 2016, the ASN announced that within three months EDF would have to perform an unscheduled check of the functionality of steam generators at nuclear reactors 2 and 4 of the Tricastin nuclear power plant and at three other French nuclear reactors currently in operation. It later became known that a total of twelve reactors had to be tested.

Shutdown for safety

After the atomic safety authority (ASN) followed Edf's application for a renewed ten-year operating license for the Tricastin nuclear power plant in 2010, it ordered the four reactors to be closed at the end of September 2017. The reason she cites the high risk of a dam breaking on the Canal de Donzère-Mondragon on the Rhône as a result of a possible earthquake and a failure of the emergency cooling system caused by the resulting flooding . The Fessenheim nuclear power plant was in a similar situation until its final shutdown in 2020. After a stress test in 2011, the operator apparently failed to comply with a requirement that the dams should be better protected against breakage by 2014.

The blocks were then successively switched off between September 29 and October 4, 2017. At the end of October 2017, the operator postponed the restart date to the end of November 2017.

Data of the reactor blocks

The Tricastin 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
Tricastin-1	Pressurized water reactor	915 MW	955 MW	11/01/1974	05/31/1980	December 01, 1980
Tricastin-2	Pressurized water reactor	915 MW	955 MW	December 01, 1974	08/07/1980	December 01, 1980
Tricastin-3	Pressurized water reactor	915 MW	955 MW	04/01/1975	02/10/1981	05/11/1981
Tricastin-4	Pressurized water reactor	915 MW	955 MW	05/01/1975	06/12/1981	11/01/1981

See also

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

Web links

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

• Advertising representation of the EDF for the power plant
• Environmental measurement report
• Greenpeace France: 5 centrales nucléaires à fermer en priority
• Nuclear power plants at risk. France fears a Fukushima scenario . Tagesschau , October 13, 2017, the nuclear power plant has been shut down due to the dangers of inadequate dikes
• La centrale nucléaire du Tricastin mise à l'arrêt pour travaux en raison d'une fragilité , newspaper "Sud-Ouest", Bordeaux, September 28, 2017 (French)
• Block 1 in the PRIS of the International Atomic Energy Agency

Footnotes

1. ↑ Report environnemental, social, sociétal, de sûreté nucléaire et de radioprotection 2006 Tricastin . Areva , S. 9. As of July 10, 2008 comurhex ( Memento of the original from January 17, 2012 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. (PDF; French) 
2. ↑ ASN: Erreur de conception affectant la résistance au séisme de réservoirs d'eau de plusieurs réacteurs de 900 MWe . As of July 10, 2007 Archived copy ( memento of the original from August 3, 2008 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. (French) 
3. ↑ Background: Tricastin - largest nuclear power plant in the world  ( 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. , n24.de of July 9, 2008, last accessed on May 14, 2012.  
4. ↑ spiegel.de July 15, 2013: Greenpeace protest: Activists board a French nuclear power plant
5. ↑ Leak at reactor . The Times September 2, 1980 p. 6 [1] (English)
6. ^ Accident chronicle, s. at 1999
7. ↑ Dépassement de la température autorisée de rejet dans le canal de Donzère-Mondragon . ASN, as of July 10, 2007 Archived copy ( memento of the original from August 1, 2008 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. (French) 
8. ↑ Control of the installations nucléaires de base EDF - CNPE du Tricastin (INB n ° 87/88) Inspection n ° INS-2004-EDFTRI-0023 Lutte contre l'incendie . ASN, as of July 10, 2007 asn  ( 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. (PDF; French)  
9. ↑ dispute after the nuclear leak Tricastin ( Memento of 6 December 2008 at the Internet Archive ), tagesschau.de 11 July, 2008
10. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung : Uranium accident in France - researchers warn of radiation exposure, accessed on July 9, 2008
11. ↑ Concealed incidents in the past? , faz.net, July 16, 2008
12. ↑ Tricastin: “Not just any incident” , heise.de, July 17, 2008
13. ↑ spiegel.de: 100 people irradiated during inspection from July 23, 2008 (accessed on July 24, 2008).
14. ↑ spiegel.de: Police search offices in the Tricastin nuclear facility
15. ↑ IRSN analysis (PDF)
16. ↑ INES classification ASN ( Memento of the original from April 24, 2011 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. 
17. ↑ Spiegel Online: The fire brigade has to put out a transformer fire
18. ↑ www.asn.fr: L'ASN prescrit la réalisation sous trois mois de contrôles sur les générateurs de vapeur de cinq réacteurs d'EDF dont l'acier présente une concentration élevée en carbone (press release)
19. ↑ Décision n ° 2016-DC-0572 de l'ASN du 18 octobre 2016  ( 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.  
20. ↑ FAZ.net October 19, 2016
21. ↑ ASN.fr 5 December 2016: Situation des générateurs de vapeur dont l'acier présente une concentration élevée en carbone: l'ASN considère que le redémarrage des réacteurs concernés peut être envisagé. Des verifications propres à chaque réacteur restent nécessaires.
22. ↑ Tricastin scrap nuclear power plant - ASN extends term by 10 years. Linkszeitung , December 2, 2010. Retrieved October 13, 2017 . 
23. ^ Fessenheim and Tricastin: France fears the Fukushima scenario | Home | SWR news . In: swr.online . ( swr.de [accessed on October 13, 2017]).
24. ↑ France fears a Fukushima scenario . Tagesschau , October 13, 2017. Accessed October 13, 2017.
25. ↑ EDF to close temporarily Tricastin nuclear plant over flooding risk . In: Reuters , September 28, 2017. Retrieved October 13, 2017.
26. ^ Sûreté nucléaire: La centrale du Tricastin à l'arrêt complet. La Provence , Avignon, October 5, 2017; ibid. October 4th communication from the operator
27. ↑ Akw shutdown charged EDF [2] , Handelsblatt , October 30, 2017, accessed October 31, 2017.
28. ↑ Power Reactor Information System of the IAEA : "France (French Republic): Nuclear Power Reactors" (English)
29. ↑ the most recent published measured values ​​are (as of October 20, 2016) from December 2012.
30. ↑ about five nuclear power plants that should be closed first (pdf, 6 MB)