Three U.K. Reactors Back Online

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland) - Three nuclear reactors in U.K. that were taken out of action due to unforeseen issues in recent months have been given the green light to return to service.

The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) has granted permission for two reactors at Hartlepool and one at Heysham 1 to return to service after owner EDF Energy (London, England) shut them in August as a precautionary measure. At the time, EDF shut a total of four reactors after a fault was discovered at a boiler spine at Unit 1 of its Heysham 1 nuclear power plant in Lancashire, England. A second reactor at Heysham 1 was also halted alongside the two at Hartlepool nuclear power plant in County Durham, in the north east of England.

"EDF Nuclear Generation Limited presented ONR with a safety justification for the return to service of Heysham 1 Reactor 2 and the two reactors at Hartlepool," ONR stated. "ONR has completed an independent assessment of this justification and is satisfied that EDF has demonstrated the continued safe operation for these reactors.EDF intends to present a separate safety justification for Heysham 1 Reactor 1 which will be subject to independent assessment and will require formal permission from ONR before the reactor can return to service."

EDF revealed that during the Heysham 1 Reactor 1 planned statutory outage in 2013, an "unexpected result" was found during routine ultrasonic inspection of a boiler spine. Heysham 1 Reactor 1 was brought back online in early 2014 on reduced load. The isolated boiler quadrant underwent more detailed inspections in June, revealing a "defect in the location indicated by the initial findings". It has remained shut down since then. There is no date yet for when it will be brought back into service.

In October, EDF Energy was forced to counter nuclear safety concerns from the Scottish government after cracks were found some of the 6,000 bricks that make up one of the two reactors at Hunterston B, located in North Ayrshire, Scotland. The cracks were discovered during a major planned service and maintenance operation but Colin Weir, Station Director at Hunterston B, explained at the time: "During the current Hunterston outage, we found two bricks with a new crack, which is what we predicted during Hunterston B's lifetime as a result of extensive research and modelling. It will not affect the operation of this reactor and we also expect that a few additional cracks will occur during the next period of operation. The small number of cracked bricks found during routine inspection is in line with our expectations; the findings have no safety implications, and are well within any limits for safe operation agreed with our regulator." For additional information, see October 8, 2014, article - Cracks at U.K. Nuclear Plant 'No Threat'.

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