November 28, 2021
Sunday, November 28th, 2021
Whistleblower gives clues
Incident at nuclear power plant in China resolved
With the help of a whistleblower, French researchers reconstruct an incident in a nuclear power plant in southern China: Apparently a reactor installed there has a design flaw. In China it was only said that the nuclear power plant had been shut down for maintenance work.
After an incident in a nuclear power plant in southern China in the summer, the cause has now been clarified. The gas leak is said to be due to a design fault in the reactor pressure vessel, as the French association CRIIRAD announced. The French energy company Electricité de France (EDF) was involved in the construction of the Akw in Taishan, southern China.
The Commission for Independent Research and Information on Radioactivity (CRIIRAD) relied on information from a whistleblower reported to the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN). “This is a Frenchman who works in the nuclear industry and has access to very precise technical information about the condition of the Taishan 1 core,” said Bruno Chareyron, head of the CRIIRAD laboratory.
The Chinese main operator CGN announced on July 1st that it would shut down reactor 1 of the EPR nuclear power plant Taishan near Hong Kong “for maintenance work”. It had previously been reported that gas had leaked from the reactor. Two new types of pressurized water reactors (European Pressurized Water Reactor, EPR) are in operation in the Akw.
Defects in the hydraulic system of the tank
The identified damage to the fuel assemblies was due to “abnormal vibrations” which are “associated with a design flaw in the EPR pressure vessel,” wrote CRIIRAD. Model tests at the nuclear equipment supplier Framatome in Le Creusot, France, had already discovered these deficiencies in the tank hydraulics in 2007 and 2008.
The two EPR reactors in Taishan are so far the only ones in the world that are already supplying electricity. The two blocks west of the Chinese special administrative regions Hong Kong and Macau went online in 2018 and 2019. In total, China has around 50 nuclear reactors in operation, making it third in the world after the USA and France.
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