2023-08-16 14:00:00
– A fire and a series of shutdowns of a nuclear reactor in Bugey are worrying
EDF communicated on a fire outbreak on July 30 outside the nuclear zone. The Nuclear Sortir network believes that the operator is minimizing the incident and does not know why emergency shutdowns have taken place since.
Posted today at 4:00 p.m.
Buildings of the aging Bugey power plant.
AFP
A fire outbreak, an emergency shutdown and a drop in power of reactor number 4 of the Bugey nuclear power plant occurred on the site of Electricité de France (EDF) located 70 km from Geneva as the crow flies. On July 30, a press release from the French operator announced that a fire had broken out at a secondary circuit pump, specifying that the fire was outside the nuclear zone. In this same text, EDF specified that “the outbreak of fire had been quickly brought under control and had not resulted in any injuries or consequences for safety and the environment”.
These reassuring remarks did not convince the Sortir dunuclear association. In a message to the “Tribune de Genève”, Joël Guerry details the incident which affected “one of the two pumps used to evacuate the heat from the three steam generators” of the plant, which contribute to the cooling of the primary circuit of the reactor. According to Sortir dunuclear, it was an oil leak that ignited on contact with the hot walls of the pump. The fire would have started at 3:30 p.m. to be extinguished at 8 p.m., according to the anti-nuclear network. “The agents on site unable to stop this fire, around 4:15 p.m., the external emergency services were alerted and an internal emergency plan (PUI) was triggered”, according to the association. EDF did not communicate on this point.
A reactor “which does not operate normally”
Sortir du nuclear considers that EDF minimized the incident and wonders. Another emergency shutdown took place on August 2 following a maintenance operation. No impact according to EDF. However, for the association, these incidents show that EDF “does not know why its reactor is not operating normally” and “that EDF is far from having everything under control and that the management of the site leaves something to be desired”. The network stresses that the operator “gives no details on the system impacted, the causes of the failure, the date of the last check carried out”.
Finally, on August 8, EDF reported a new shutdown following the “failure of equipment located in the engine room, outside the nuclear zone, this shutdown allowing intervention in complete safety on this equipment”.
Following this new incident, the Bugey 4 reactor has only been restarting since Monday
morning August 14. “On Tuesday August 15, its power was 430 MW (note: regarding half the power of the reactor)», indicates Joël Guerry.
Olivier Bot has been deputy editor-in-chief since 2017, head of the World section between 2011 and 2017. Prix Varennes. Author of “Searching and investigating with the internet” at the Grenoble University Press. More info
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