A first reactor of the Gravelines Nuclear Plant (North) was restarted on Wednesday morning, EDF announced, while the production of the site was completely paralyzed since Monday morning due to the massive presence of jellyfish. “Reactor No. 6 restarted this morning at 7:30 am,” according to an EDF spokesman. Currently, three other production units are arrested due to numerous jellyfish that failed in the filter drums of seawater pumping stations used for reactor cooling, an extremely rare incident.
Production units n. ° 2, 3, 4 and 6 were automatically stopped between Sunday night and Monday morning due to this “massive and non -predictable presence” of jellyfish in the filter battery of the pumping stations, EDF announced in its place. The other two production units, No. 1 and 5, are currently in maintenance.
The site “has procedures in case of marine elements”
According to Elvire Antajan, a researcher at the French Research Institute for the Operation of the Sea (Ifremer), “several thousand jellyfish” entered the port of Dunkerque, where the energy plant pumps its cooling waters. This “had no consequence of the security of the facilities, the security of the personnel or in the environment,” he told the operator on Monday, remembering that the pumping stations are in the non -nuclear part of the power plant.
The incident “interrupted the production of electricity but did not affect the cooling of equipment that guarantees the safety of the reactors,” said the Nuclear and Radiation Protection Authority (ASNR), specifying that “this risk is known” and that “the Gravian Energy Station has procedures in case of the influx of marine elements (Jellyfishfishf, algae) that probably seal its filtration of devices.”
Located by the North Sea, Gravelines is the largest nuclear power plant in Western Europe, for its number of reactors and its production capacity (6 pressurized water reactors of 900 megawatts each). The site must also accommodate two new generation reactors (EPR2) of 1,600 MW each by 2040.
Source: BFM TV
