Nuclear power in Europe

MADRID, Sept 24 (Reuters) – Spain’s nuclear regulator said on Thursday it will inspect the 1,000 megawatt Iberdrola-owned Cofrentes nuclear power station after part of a fuel rod was dropped during refuelling work.

The Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) added in a statement that it had given the event on Tuesday a preliminary rating of 1 on the International Nuclear Events Scale (INES), but that workers, the general population and environment were not at risk. (more…)

EDF Energy, which own the nuclear power station in Romney Marsh, Kent, said that no radiation was released and members of the public were not in danger.

The incident on June 29 is understood to have taken place in a building away from the reactor, when a piece of rubber became trapped in a fuel coupling. (more…)

PARIS, Sept 8 (Reuters) – A security incident has occurred at a French nuclear site already under scrutiny because of a series of safety scares over the summer, France’s ASN nuclear safety authority said on Monday.

ASN said two fuel units became snagged in a reactor at Tricastin in southern France on Monday morning when site workers were attempting to remove them during maintenance work. (more…)

BRUSSELS (AFP) — Fresh tests carried out near a Belgian medical laboratory showed that a leak of radioactive iodine last weekend was worse than had initially been thought, authorities said late Thursday.

Samples of grass taken next to the National Institute for Radioactive Elements near the southern city of Charleroi had shown higher levels of radioactive iodine than the first tests, an interior ministry crisis group said here. (more…)

PARIS: French nuclear engineering giant Areva said Wednesday it will invest €20 million (US$29.2 million) to improve health and environmental monitoring at a reactor complex that has been the site of a series of recent safety incidents.

The investment will also be used to find a new storage place for nuclear waste held at a site near the Tricastin complex that Areva acquired from France’s Atomic Energy Commission in 2006, Areva said. (more…)

A remote-controlled crane struck an electric power cable outside a nuclear power plant in the southern city of Biblis, leading to the shutdown of one of two reactors, the press reported Wednesday.

The operator of the Biblis nuclear power plant said the turbine linked to reactor B was automatically turned off after the crane clipped a high-voltage cable during construction work at a water treatment plant. (more…)

German Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety said Saturday that 122 incidents were subject to reporting at the country’s nuclear power plants last year, according to the Munich-based Focus news magazine.

Based on a seven-stage international evaluation scale (INES), 120 incidents were reported on the lowest notifiable category. (more…)

PARIS (Reuters) – France’s nuclear safety authority (ASN) said on Thursday it had provisionally classified a leak of liquid containing uranium on a site in southeastern France earlier this week at level one of the INES nuclear scale.

The International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), used to measure the potential danger of incidents at nuclear installation, has seven levels, the lowest of which is zero. (more…)

Budapest/Vienna – Faulty maintenance procedures led to an incident in the Hungarian nuclear power plant in Paks on Monday, but no radioactivity was released, a report by Hungarian authorities to the UN nuclear agency said. It was the second incident in Paks caused by human error since 2006, the Hungarian Atomic Energy Authority said in its report to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

On Monday morning, two workers failed to properly seal an air- locked area during maintenance of the first unit of the power plant, 100 kilometres south of Budapest. (more…)

BARCELONA (Reuters) – Safety controls could be stepped up at Spain’s nuclear power stations following a leak at a plant that will require the screening of hundreds of people, a leading nuclear security official said on Wednesday.

Spain’s Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) criticized operators at the Asco I plant on Monday for failing to tell it about contamination from a leak which happened last November until April this year. (more…)