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Event Report Forms (ERFs) are filed to the IAEA. Sometimes there are multiple event reports, updating the rating, the event description. Here you only see the latest event report

ERF send date: Thu, 17-09-1992
ERF description: The incident at Barsebaeck 2 on July 2 8 showed serious deficiencies in the emergency cooling systems of the five oldest boiling water reactors: Barsebaeck 1 and 2, Ringhals 1 as well as Oskarshamn 1 and 2. The SKI today required that the utilities carry out acceptable measures in order to handle these deficiencies. Until then the five reactors must not be taken into operation.
All of the reactors concerned are now out of operation. Four of them carry out their yearly refuelling outage, and yesterday the Sydkraft Inc. announced that they will take the B2 reactor out of operation due to their own safety assessment.
This is an extremely important decision both with regard to the importance of the safety issue, and with regard to the fact that in the present situation five reactors must not be further operated, the Director General of the SKI points out.
The SKI demands imply that the utilities have to prove that the systems that shall cool the core must be operable with high reliability, even if at a pipe break there are major quantities of strainers through which the pumps to the core cooling suck cooling water.
This problem has already been noticed in former safety analyses. Both technical calculations and laboratory experiments have been accomplished showing that a stop-up can happen, however no sooner than after several hours. Both the analyses of the incident at Barsebaeck 2 by the utilities as well as those by the SKI, now show that a stop-up can be in fact much sooner, perhaps as soon as within 20 minutes. In that case the operators have too short a time to carry out the manouevers that to date have to be carried out in order to back-flush the strainers and restore the cooling with the high reliability that is required in nuclear power.
At Barsebaeck 2 nothing happened due to the fact that the incident occurred at very low reactor power and moreover that there was no pipe break. In this case a safety valve opened spuriously. There was plenty of time and many possibilities to get coolant to the core. At a major pipe pipe break at full reactor power the situation will be much more difficult. These are the circumstances leading to the SKI decision.
ERF rating date: 17-09-1992
ERF contact person: MR. F. REISCH
ERF address: Sweden
ERF affiliation: SWEDISH NUCLEAR POWER INSPECTORATE (SKI)

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