During a routine surveillance of the position indicating instruments in the control room, it was noticed that a valve in the contaiment pressure relief line to the atmosphere (system 361) and two valves in the venting line to the emergency filter (system 362) were closed. The valves were closed in connection with the annual testing after the refuelling outage. The testing procedures included the reopening of the valves. However, the valves were not restored to their correct (open) position, inspite that each step in the testing procedure was signed by the operator. Instructions for testing during the outage are improved. Justification of rating: Level 1, anomaly beyond the authorized operating regime. Procedure based on initiators and safety function operability: Reactivity Control, cooling of radioactive materials, confinement of radioactive materials: Major LOCA up to an including the largest justfied pipe rupture in the reactor coolant boundary. Availability, within OL&C. Initiator did not occur. Additional factors for uprating: Procedure inadequacies. Level 1
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, […]
