At 13.02 hours on May 14, 1995 an instrumented liquid relief valve on the primary coolant system opened spuriously due to a failed diaphragm, discharging coolant to the bleed condenser. This resulted in a reactor trip by shutdown system 1 on low pressurizer level. When the bleed condenser filled, its two relief valves opened, discharging approximately 25Mg of reactor coolant onto the containment floor. A station emergency - category 1 was declared and station accounting was initiated. A coolant recovery pump was placed in service and contaiment manually buttoned-up. Reactor building containment pressure was reduced by manually opening auxiliary pressure regulating valves to the vacuum building. By 15:58, in-pant survey indicated that there was no particulate detectd, no stack alarms and no elevated radiation field. At 16:07 the situation was reduced to a unit alert. Off-site surveys confirmed that there was no increased radiological release to the environment. Tests confirmed that there were no fuel failures as a result of this incident. The unit has been cooled down and placed into a guaranteed shutdown state. Investigation into the cause of the liquid relief valve diaphragm failure has commenced.
Using INES Manual Table II, this incident is treated at INES level 1, on degradation of defence-in-depth. The initiator ("expected" frequency) was "reactor coolant leakage" that would no prevent a controlled reactor shutdown and cooldown". Safety function availability was "within operational limits and conditions".
EPZ, the operator of the Borssele nuclear power plant, has long claimed that it recycles "95 percent" of its nuclear fuel, and that only "5 percent" remains as nuclear waste. Following a complaint by Laka, the Board of Appeals of the Dutch Advertising Authority, ruled yesterday that these are misleading environmental advertisement claims. In its […]
(Nederlandse versie) On Sunday, September 11, the Mikhail Dudin arrives in the port of Rotterdam; a ship carrying Russian uranium. There it will be transferred to trucks that will then transport it across the Netherlands on Monday to Lingen, Germany, where the uranium will be processed into fuel rods. This was announced this morning by […]
(Nederlandse versie) Laka sometimes gets the question that if nuclear power plants in France can be used flexibly, can nuclear power not be used as a intermittent source of electricity, complementing wind and solar? The short answer then is, that if nuclear power plants can be used flexibly, it does not mean that in France […]
New brochure focusing on the uranium enrichment consortium Urenco. The Treaty of Almelo was signed on 4 March 1970 ‒ an agreement between the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and West Germany on setting up a company with the aim of enriching uranium: Urenco. The origin of uranium enrichment is military and until then enrichment was […]
Despite its triumphant press release of the contrary, two years ago, NRG, the operator of the High Flux Reactor in the Netherlands, this week confirmed Laka’s suspicion that NRG is still using weapons-grade highly enriched uranium in its reactor. Therefore, the Netherlands is currently in breach of its agreement with Obama, reached at the Nuclear […]
