5 injured in ‘technical incident’ at French nuclear power plant
Print Edition
AN explosion at a nuclear power plant on France’s northwest coast yesterday caused minor injuries, but authorities said there was no risk of radiation.
The blast took place in the engine room at the Flamanville plant, which lies 25 kilometers west of the port of Cherbourg and just across from the Channel Islands.
“It is a technical incident. It is not a nuclear accident,” senior local official Jacques Witkowski told reporters.
He said a ventilator had exploded outside the nuclear zone at the plant, which has been in operation since the 1980s and is operated by state-controlled energy giant EDF.
“It’s all over. The emergency teams are leaving,” Witkowski said.
Five people suffered smoke inhalation but there were no serious injuries, he said.
One of the two pressurized water reactors at the plant was shut down after the explosion and the incident was declared over by late morning, authorities said.
The two 1,300-megawatt reactors have been in service since 1985 and 1986, and the site currently employs 810 people, alongside an additional 350 subcontractors.
A new third-generation reactor known as EPR is being built at Flamanville, which will be the world’s largest when it goes into operation in late 2018.
Construction of the new reactor at the site in Normandy began in 2007 and was initially due for completion in 2012 but has been delayed several times, and its initial budget has more than tripled to 10.5 billion euros (US$11.2 billion).
EDF said its safety record at nuclear sites improved last year, with 2.3 accidents for every 1 million hours worked, compared with 2.6 in 2015.
That translates into five accidents that required reactor shutdowns last year, after eight the previous year.
France relies heavily on nuclear power, building its first nuclear plant in 1977 at Fessenheim, a site on the border with Germany that is set to be decommissioned in 2018.
Nuclear reactors generate about 75 percent of France’s electricity, a level the government wants to reduce to 50 percent by 2025.
Fessenheim, on a seismic fault line, has worried French, German and Swiss environmentalists for years and its fate has been the subject of dispute with Germany, which decided to phase out nuclear power following the Fukushima meltdown.
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