Prosecutor Investigates Troubled Forsmark

摘要

The safety of Sweden's nuclear reactors is under intense scrutiny following a series of damaging revelations at Forsmark nuclear plant, 66%-owned by Vattenfall. A Swedish prosecutor is investigating whether the plant's management broke nuclear safety laws in its handling of a level-2 scram at Forsmark 1 in July last year. At the same time an internal report has damned the plant for having a degraded security culture. Meanwhile, concerns over the condition of rubber seals on housings for reactors one and two led to the units being shut down February 3 while further tests are carried out - this just a few months after operation resumed following the extended outage caused by last summer's scram. The decision, taken nuclear regulator SKI at the end of January, to request the prosecutor in Uppsala to investigate Forsmark's handling of the scram has shifted focus from the generator failure which caused the event, to the way in which the plant's management dealt with the emergency. In particular, the prosecutor has opened an investigation into whether the management broke the law by not bringing the reactor to a cool shut down fast enough.