Belgium’s Electrabel restarts Doel units; tank issue keeps Tihange-1 shut

摘要

The 454-MW Doel-1 and 454-MW Doel-2, in Belgium restarted in late May and early June after a series of tests related to an extended outage to prepare the units for long term operation amid delays caused by coronavirus pandemic safety measures, while the 1,009-MW Tihange-1 will now remain offline until the end of 2020 as a result of a tank failure, according to operator Engie-Electrabel. The discovery of a failure in a cooling water reservoir tank during an attempted restart of operations after five months of planned maintenance caused the delay in the return to service at Tihange-1. Doel-1, in Flanders, restarted June 9, while the adjacent Doel-2 returned to full capacity June 6, after running at lower capacity for a week starting May 30 to allow operational testing of a new turbine, Nele Scheerlinck, an Engie-Electrabel spokeswoman, said June 12. French reactor services company Framatome in a June 11 statement said that it had completed the modernization of the control and emergency systems at Doel-1 and 2. Framatome, which is owned by EDF, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Assystem, installed new systems in the Doel-1 and -2 emergency control rooms, as part of an Engie-Electrabel agreement to invest Eur700 million ($780.4 million) in upgrades in return for a 10-year lifetime extension for both reactors. “These systems control and monitor the nuclear safety equipment, reinforcing the security of the plant,” Framatome said in the statement. “The emergency systems are mainly responsible for the removal of residual heat from the primary circuit and for managing the pressure and water/boron concentration.”