Thursday, November 8, 2012

Unexpected Shutdown of Cernavoda Nuke Plant in Romania "did not effect the safety of the population or the environment", says the Government


The same refrain (or the famous last word), the world over.

Cernavodă Nuclear Power Plant has two CANDU pressurized heavy water reactors.

The reactor 2, which unexpectedly shut down on Wednesday, will be restarted on Friday. The report is due in 48 hours (that's Friday).

According to the Romanian report below, "the unit shut down automatically as a result of an automatic rapid closure system having unexpectedly gone up". (Now, do I have to study CANDU reactors, too? I have no idea what this means.)

From ACT Media (11/8/2012):

Unexpected shutdown of Cernavoda n-plant's unit 2 did not affect safety of people or the environment

The unexpected shutdown on Wednesday of unit 2 of the Cernavoda nuclear-power plant did not effect the safety of the population or the environment, the Ministry of the Environment and Forestry (MMP) reports in a press release.

'Information coming from the National Environmental Protection Agency indicates that the automated gamma radiation monitoring devices do not show any increase in the normal values, while the results of the measurements fall within the limits of the natural fund,' reads the release.

The devices monitor the radiation 24/7, and in this instance the normal radiation level was not exceeded.

The unexpected shutdown of the unit did not affect the safety of the plant's staff, the population or the environment, and the causes behind the malfunction will be the subject of a detailed analysis, MMP says in the release.

Radiation monitoring will continue, says MMP and any excess radiation will be notified to the National Environmental Guard and jointly analysed.

The Nuclearelectrica National Nuclear Power Corporation announced unit 2 of the Cernavoda nuclear-power plant shut down unexpectedly on Wednesday at 11:300hrs, EET, and it will be restarted on Friday.

The unit shut down automatically as a result of an automatic rapid closure system having unexpectedly gone up. The causes for the closure are being investigated according to the procedures of the plant.

The unit is safely down and it will be restarted as soon as the exact causes behind the malfunction are found.

State secretary with the Economy Ministry Rodin Traicu said a report on the unexpected shutdown on Wednesday of unit 2 of the Cernavoda nuclear-power plant will be ready in 48 hours, but the incident did not pose any risk to nuclear activity.


From the wiki on the plant:

"The Nuclear Power Plant in Cernavodă (Romanian: Centrala Nucleară de la Cernavodă) is a nuclear power plant in Romania. It produces around 20% of the country's electricity. It uses CANDU reactor technology from AECL, using heavy water produced at Drobeta-Turnu Severin as its neutron moderator and water from the Danube – Black Sea Canal for cooling.

"By using nuclear power, Romania is able to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by over 10 million tonnes each year.[citation needed]"


How wonderful.

(H/T Dan Berte)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

The translation is horrible. They are essentially saying the reactor was tripped, then follows some speculation about the causes of the trip. They don't know yet.

Anonymous said...

Every year 10 million tonnes less of CO2.
Every year 100 additional tonnes of nuclear fuel to be babysitted for thousands of years.
Really, wonderful progress.
Beppe

Maju said...

Very concerned. Europe has lots of chances of suffering the next major catastrophe, together with the USA.

I'm very glad that the NPP near my hometown, Garoña, which is a single-reactor "cousin" of Fukushima Daiichi, will be closed on June. But still France, Britain, Spain, Russia, Sweden, Finland, Ukraine... have way too many NPPs, endangering all the continent and much of the rest of the World.

We desperately need more wind, solar and other renewable sources of energy and, by any means, get rid of every single nuclear reactor on Europe ASAP.

arclight said...

hi admin
just got a bit of info for you

Switzerland registered a 2 microsievert/hour peak before 10.00 am 08/11/2012

There is a suspicious switch off on the monitor for the day before..

The emissions from this plant were lofted high and reached the Swiss alps

RO0123 - BAIA MARE (Romania)
Lat: 47.7ºN, Long: 23.6ºE, HoL: 1 m., HoS: 193 m.

http://eurdepweb.jrc.ec.europa.eu/PublicEurdepMap/TimeSeries.aspx?loc=763&end=201211090030&int=D1&rad=1&test=0

hope you dont mind i have mirrored your article on nuclear-news.net (australia) .. learning to be a news blogger.. its not easy you know! ;)

peace light and love to all here

arclight said...

this is the correct location of the swiss monitor and the link above goes with it

CH502350 - SCUOL SMN (Switzerland) Lat: 46.8ºN, Long: 10.3ºE, HoL:--m., HoS: 1304 m.

Anonymous said...

Cernavoda NPP runs CANDU reactors - unenriched Uranium and heavy water in pressure tubes surrounded with more heavy water. The (superheated) heavy water in the zircalloy tubes acts as primary coolant and is in turn cooled with a secondary loop of normal water, which is turned to steam and fed into turbines.

The design is very cool because it allows for online fuel operations (the core is horizontal, like in the Hanford reactors, so this is rather safe). There is no batch de- and re-fuelling, bundles are replaced individually as needed.

It's not so cool because it has a positive void coefficient.

Anonymous said...

Hmm, no batch refueling means less dowtime and more profits.
Positive void coefficient sounds like less safe (because not intrinsically stable).
So these CANDU reactors seem to provide more money to their investors in exchange for more risk for the nearby population.
Sounds like a fair deal.
Beppe

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