Security & Safety

French Regulator Puts Back Deadline For Emergency Diesel Generator Installation

By David Dalton
27 February 2019

27 Feb (NucNet): France’s nuclear regulator ASN has put back the deadline for the installation of additional backup emergency diesel generators at the country’s fleet of commercial nuclear power plants by two years from 31 December 2018 to 31 December 2020.

In a statement ASN said this was because of “difficulties” faced by state-controlled nuclear plant operator EDF during construction.

EDF told ASN it would not be able to meet the original deadline for all of France’s 58 commercial nuclear plants. ASN gave no details of the problems EDF has faced, but said they arose in particular from “the scale, the complexity of operations and the peculiarities of certain sites”.

“ASN considers that the difficulties encountered by EDF are proven and that some of them still remain,” the statement said.

In June 2012 ASN told EDF to install additional backup emergency diesel generators for all of its nuclear plants following the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear accident in Japan, where emergency diesel generators installed in the machine buildings were submerged by a tsunami, depriving the plant of all AC power supply.

Emergency diesel generators are used as a back-up source of emergency power in nuclear plants, powering core cooling systems and other equipment needed for maintaining the safe shutdown of the reactor.

EDF is installing the additional backup generators in remote, bunkered locations at each nuclear plant site.

To date, two emergency generators have been installed and are operational at the Saint-Laurent nuclear power station on the Loire river south of Paris.

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