China: Taishan Nuclear Power Plant, damaged more than 70 fuel rods: French state radio RFI
-Is it a design mistake in the reactor pressure vessel?
French Radioactivity NGO:
French NGOs have recently obtained information from whistleblowers.
Guangdong Province, China
Taishan Nuclear Power Station
In June of this year, a leak of radioactive noble gas was reported.
French national radio station:
The RFI reported on November 28th.
About Taishan Nuclear Power Station
When more than 70 fuel rods were damaged,
It was revealed that it far exceeded the five originally announced.
It is highly possible that the cause was a design error in the reactor pressure vessel.
Taishan Nuclear Power Plant:
It was jointly built by China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) and France Electric Power (EDF).
EDF holds a 30% stake.
It is the world’s first nuclear power plant that has introduced the European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPR).
64km from Macau.
The Epoch Times
https://www.epochtimes.jp/2021/12/82648.html
Nuclear: the accident at the Taishan EPR plant is believed to be due to a design flaw
28 NOV 2021
The incident which led in July to the shutdown of a reactor at the Taishan EPR nuclear power plant in southern China
is believed to be due to a design flaw in the vessel, the French association CRIIRAD said on Saturday.
The Commission for Independent Research and Information on Radioactivity (CRIIRAD)
would get its information from a “whistleblower”.
“This is a Frenchman who works in the nuclear industry, having access to very precise technical information on the situation of the Taishan 1 reactor core,”
a CRIIRAD official told AFP.
Taishan is the only pressurized water reactor (EPR) plant in the world, with two reactors.
Four other EPR reactors are under construction,
all in Europe:
one in Finland,
one in France in Flamandville
and two in England
It is a tank design problem that would be the cause of the incident in Taishan reported on June 14, 2021.
This is a first explanation.
What is the tank?
The nuclear reactor vessel
is neither more nor less than the heart of the device.On the site of the French power plant manufacturer Framatome,
we can thus read that it is about “the equipment in which the water of the primary circuit is heated in contact with the nuclear fuel.
The water of the primary circuit
then goes circulate to the steam generators to transfer its heat to the water in the secondary circuit, transforming the latter into steam.The steam thus created then feeds a turbine, connected to an alternator to produce electricity “.
In short, a tank that malfunctions is a broken down plant.
Moreover, specifies a French government site devoted to the subject,
“unlike other devices in the primary circuit, such as steam generators or tank covers, the replacement of a tank is not an operation envisaged by EDF. “.
Clearly,
the lifespan of a plant is linked to the lifespan of its tank.In an EPR plant,
the water pressurization techniques are different but the tank plays an equally fundamental role.
“EDF underestimated the Chinese regime’s culture of secrecy”
At the end of May,
EDF was alerted by “an incident” on the reactor and discovered that, at CGN’s request,
the National Nuclear Safety Administration, the Chinese nuclear safety authority,
had raised the authorized gas concentration threshold as of December 2020.
rare in the primary circuit at 324 gigabecquerels per tonne of water (GBt / t)
– whereas it is 150 GBt / t in France –
to avoid the shutdown of the reactor in a region suffering from an electricity shortage for many months.
The effective rate
had already reached 290 GBt / t when the Frenchman was notified.However,
the intervention of American engineers from Framatome, a subsidiary of EDF, is necessary.