Switzerland’s Leibstadt nuclear power plant says the plant will remain out of service until September 2005 so that parts of a damaged generator can be replaced.
The single 1165-megawatt Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) unit has been off line since 28th March 2005 when a short circuit in the generator led to the automatic shutdown of the reactor’s turbine, which was followed by the manual shutdown of the unit.
Plant manager Mario Schoenenberger said on 22nd April 2005 that it had been hoped to resume operations within a few weeks, but further investigations found the damage had led to the melting of some metal plates and that the parts concerned had to be replaced. He said the exact cause of the damage was not yet known.
Mr Schoenenberger said that a two-week outage for maintenance and fuel changing, scheduled to start in August 2005, had been brought forward and was started on 19th April to keep the total outage time to a minimum.
Further details about the outage (in German) and photographs of the work involved have been posted on Leibstadt’s website (www.kkl.ch).
