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Nuclear plant in Tihange, Huy (Belgium)
Belgian power utility Electrabel it restarted a nuclear reactor at its ageing Tihange plant, just days after being forced to shut it down following a fire in the electricity supply system. An Electrabel spokesman said the Tihange 1 reactor was put back on line as scheduled and would be running at full power in due course. Last shutdown of the reactor was "normal procedure" after such a fire, the company said previously.
Tihange 1 is the oldest of three reactors at the plant, about an hour's drive south-west of Brussels, and began service in 1975. It was meant to be closed completely in 2015 but the Belgium government decided in 2012 to keep it running until 2025 to help ensure electricity supplies while other energy sources are developed.
Environmentalists, especially in neighbouring Germany which is phasing out nuclear power, have criticised extending the life of Belgium's reactors, which they say are too old to be considered safe.
Belgium has suffered a series of nuclear mishaps in recent years, with three of the country's seven reactors closed at one point, in two cases due to the discovery of micro-cracks in the reactor vessels.
Electrabel was forced to halt another reactor at its Doel plant near the northern city of Antwerp, only days after it was restarted following a 21-month shutdown. The company said at the time it expected to resume operation of the Doel 3 reactor "within a few days." An Electrabel spokeswoman said that the Doel 1 reactor, halted since early last year and which was supposed to have been restarted on Sunday, Dec 26, 2015, came on line on Thursday, Dec 30th, instead. Such slippage in estimated dates was "normal," she added.
According to civil society organizations "nuclear experts are scared because Belgium has just restarted two ancient and cracked nuclear power plants that threaten to unleash another Chernobyl disaster right in the heart of Europe! One of the ageing reactors suffered a fire and explosion weeks ago and Belgium’s own nuclear safety chief called for checks after discovering 16,000 cracks!"
The Belgian nuclear watchdog is AFCN (L'Agence Fédérale de Contrôle Nucléaire), which maintains all reactors are safe. Both Electrabel and AFCN said the recent problems have only been in the non-nuclear parts of the reactor and there is no danger from the nuclear cores despite the micro-cracks.
"We resumed service following an audit from the US research firm, an international firm that guaranteed the structural integrity of the vessels," Electrabel spokeswoman Florence Coppenolle told AFP when asked about the cracks. The so-called US research firm is the US Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the largest US Department of Energy science and energy laboratory.
Unsolved sabotage
Doel 1, the country's oldest reactor, was originally shuttered in February 2015 under a law calling for the country's gradual phaseout of nuclear power, but the government then restarted it under an extension deal. The plant, about 15 kilometres as the crow flies from the major port city of Antwerp, had to be closed three days later due to a generator problem. It has now restarted a second time.
The Belgian operator Electrabel said in December it had restarted a reactor at its Tihange plant, just days after being forced to shut it down following a fire in the electricity supply system.
Tiny cracks discovered in 2012 in the reactor pressure vessels of Doel 3 and Tihange 2 caused lengthy closures of those two reactors. They were both restarted at the end of last year, one having to close quickly again, for a few days, after a water leak.
The Doel 4 reactor was also shut down urgently in August 2014 after a leak in the turbine hall, caused by tampering, gushed out 65,000 litres of oil lubricant.
Belgian prosecutors told AFP the investigation into who was responsible is continuing, and they do not rule out terrorism or an "act of revenge".
Fukushima, Chernobyl ghosts
Eloi Glorieux, Greenpeace's nuclear campaigner for Belgium, insists the micro-cracks in the Doel 3 and Tihange 2 pressure vessels are cause for concern because they are "one of the most vulnerable parts" of the plant. "If the reactor pressure (vessel) fails, then we have a Chernobyl and a Fukushima-type accident," he warned.
In March 2011, an earthquake and tsunami in Japan triggered meltdowns at the Fukushima plant, the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in Ukraine 25 years earlier. It was Fukushima that persuaded Germany to phase out its own nuclear plants.
Glorieux warned that any catastrophe in Belgium would be far worse than in Fukushima or Chernobyl, because its plants are near such densely populated areas. Tihange is 20 kilometres from the Belgian city of Liege, 40 kilometres from the Dutch city of Maastricht and 60 kilometres from the Germany city of Aachen.
The authorities in Maastricht and Aachen have hired lawyers to consider possible legal action against Belgium to ensure plant safety, or even make them close down. Electrabel's Coppenolle said the criticism of Belgium was misdirected as the Dutch have extended by 20 years the lifespan of their reactor on the Belgian border until 2033 while nine German reactors will run until 2022.
The reactor vessels, housing the nuclear cores, were built in the 1970s by the Dutch firm Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij (RDM), which has since ceased business. RDM equipped some 20 nuclear plants, half of them in Europe.
On 17 November 2015, the AFCN authorised the licensee Electrabel to restart the Doel 3 and Tihange 2 reactor units. Both reactors have been shut down for some time now because of concerns about their safety.
The uncertainty about the safety of these reactors was due to the discovery of thousands of flaw indications in the steel walls of their reactor pressure vessels, during their scheduled outage in the summer of 2012. Further investigation revealed that these flaw indications had been caused by hydrogen bubbles. These bubbles had become trapped in the material when the steel rings for the pressure vessel were manufactured and then rolled out into hydrogen flakes with an average length of 12 to 16 millimetres and the thickness of a cigarette paper. These cracks are known as hydrogen flakes. The hydrogen flakes are laminar, which means they run parallel with the wall of the pressure vessel and so do not actually ‘pierce’ it.
After these cracks were discovered, the AFCN decided to prohibit Electrabel from restarting the Doel 3 and Tihange 2 reactors until it could prove conclusively that the safety of the reactors was not at risk due to the presence of the hydrogen flakes.
The AFCN concluded that Electrabel had demonstrated that the hydrogen flakes in the walls of the reactor vessels do not pose an unacceptable safety risk for the reactors. Electrabel was therefore authorised to restart and operate the Doel 3 and Tihange 2 reactors until they are permanently decommissioned. By law this is planned on 1 October 2022 for Doel 3 and on 1 February 2023 for Tihange 2.
Rebecca Harms, Greens/EFA group Co-President in the European Parliament, Ilse Tweer and Jean-Marc Nollet presented a new study on the Belgian nuclear plants at a press conference. The study underlines «the continued failure to explain the causes of cracks in the reactors and the consequent risks with the reactors, highlighting that Belgian nuclear reactors Doel and Tihange are a risk to all of us.»
The EU counts 128 reactors in 14 Member States (WNA to 1/1/16, excluding nine shut-down German units), with more than a third of the total in France which depends almost entirely on nuclear generators for electricity. Last week, Russian and Bulgarian companies signed a contract to extend the operating life of unit 6 of the Kozloduy nuclear power plant to 60 years. The agreement - between Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant plc and a consortium of Russia's Rusatom Services and Bulgaria's Risk Engineering Ltd - was signed during a meeting of the Bulgarian-Russian intergovernmental commission on economic and scientific-technical cooperation in Sofia by Evgeny Sal'kov, general director of Rusatom Services, and Dimitar Angelov, executive director of Kozloduy NPP plc.
The last report from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament on implementation of Council Directive Euratom concludes that in some cases it is not certain that national regulatory authorities are adequately staffed and funded. Cooperation among Member States should be encouraged in order to ensure an effective use of existing resources, for instance in the case of Long Term Operation of nuclear power plants' or new builds' licencing procedures. Such cooperation would be particularly beneficial for smaller competent regulatory authorities.
Safety arrangements imposed on nuclear installations (under the supervision of regulatory authorities), including development of expertise and skills, are largely in place. Wherever appropriate, nuclear plant licence holders tend to establish strong synergies with national or international research and training organisations dedicated to the improvement of reactor safety regulation, technology and culture.
However, although most of Member States reported having national provisions as regards the human and financial resources of the licence holders, it should be clarified whether the regulatory authority has the ability to assess the adequacy of such resources, especially financial ones, and whether these obligations are effectively implemented and enforced.
As confirmed through the nuclear stress tests and the initial check of Member States’ transposition of the Directive, there are differences from country to country over the identification and management of safety issues. This is partly due to the fact that the 2009 Nuclear Safety Directive only contained broad principles, leaving some leeway to Member States as regards their implementation, and failed to impose some important requirements. The amended 2009 Directive addressed these deficiencies, by strengthening important obligations on, for instance, the independence of the regulatory authority and interaction with the public.