On November 21, 1998 while performing refuelling, at the time of unloading the core and lifting a spent fuel assembly, a failure occurred affecting the refuelling machine which caused the spent fuel assembly to slump to the reactor core. The fuel assembly was taken to a safe condition. Reactor vessel water and refuelling floor atmosphere were monitored without finding any abnormal changes.
Basis for rating this event: Event initiator - drop of a fuel assembly; frequency - Low/unlikely; Safety function availability - full. From Table II, column 3, Row A of INES user's Manual, the classification is 2.
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 […]
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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, […]
