April restarts for Belgian nukes despite report – Electrabel

Belgian utility Electrabel maintains 1 April 2015 is the scheduled restart of nuclear reactors Doel 3 and Tihange 2, despite a report by the nuclear watchdog FANC concluding the methodology proposed by Electrabel is not yet mature enough

“We are still expecting two things from Electrabel,” a FANC spokesman said. Firstly, “to explain the unexpected results of the irradiation tests it carried out to analyse the potential effect of irradiation on the mechanical properties of the steel.” Secondly, “to submit a safety case report to justify that the reactors can be safely operated,” he said.

FANC has final authorisation for restarting the units.

The reactors have been off line since 25 March, due to security concerns that originally emerged in 2012. Electrabel submitted safety case reports in April 2013 and the reactors were allowed to restart in May 2013. However, follow-up actions were imposed and the reactors were shut down again in 2014 as preliminary tests ahead of a scheduled outage revealed irradiation damage.

“We have been asked for clarifications and we will need to develop the proposed methodology further in the coming weeks before we can submit a safety case report,” an Electrabel spokeswoman said. “We will also be busy looking at a number of requests and suggestions from FANC,” she said. Electrabel declined to give a timeframe on the submission of the safety case report but said the scheduled restart date of 1 April 2015 had not changed.

FANC declined to comment on the date, saying it would need to receive the new test results, data analyses and interpretations of archived documents and would need time to review all this information. Joachim Moxon