After refueling outage in the year 2001 the plant has been started for operation (Aug. 12. 2001) without testing the boron concentration in the borated water storage tanks of the emergency core cooling system. The plant personnel began with first boron concentration tests on 25th of August. On the 27th of Aug. it was recognized that 3 out of 4 trains of the system have not fulfilled the technical specification for the boron concentration on the date when the plant was put in operation. After identification of the deviations the plant personnel did not shutdown the plant but they have taken measures to increase the boron concentration in the water tanks up to the specified value. The incident is characterized by deviations from technical specifications and deficiencies in procedures but also in the safety management of the plant.
Everywhere you look, the nuclear industry’s hype machine is in overdrive. Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and the UK government all tout small modular reactors as the silver bullet for climate change and energy security. Tech billionaires are hiring nuclear veterans. Wall Street is whispering about “round-the-clock power” for artificial intelligence data centers. For those old enough […]
Kernenergie en veiligheid: A wargame sought to test if a major radiological release that would prompt the evacuation of millions of civilians in South Korea could distract key US allies from assisting and rebuffing an all-out military invasion of Taiwan. The short answer was yes. The game originally presumed that China, wanting to keep the […]
Big batteries and EVs to the rescue again as faults with new nuclear plant cause chaos on Nordic grids The Finnish nuclear power plant Olkiluoto was finally connected to the grid last year, at an estimated cost of €11 billion compared to the original budget of €3 billion. That cost blowout forced its developer, the […]
A vast subsea nuclear graveyard planned to hold Britain’s burgeoning piles of radioactive waste is set to become the biggest, longest-lasting and most expensive infrastructure project ever undertaken in the UK. The project [UK's nuclear waste dump] is now predicted to take more than 150yrs to complete with lifetime costs of £66bn in today’s money...The […]
Last year, the Dutch Province of Limburg started an alliance in which, besides the local government, research institutes, small nuclear reactor (SMR) developers, utilities, industrial customers and funders cooperated. With this "Limburg SMR alliance" Limburg tried to lead the way towards an SMR in Limburg. The preferred site for a first SMR would be Chemelot, […]
