Philippsburg nuclear power plant: unit 1 back on the grid after maintenance
Continuation of secure, reliable and green power production
Karlsruhe. Unit 1 of the Philippsburg nuclear power plant (KKP 1) has been back on the grid since this morning (June 3rd, 2008) after an annual maintenance review. In the past week, the annual fuel rod replacement was carried out in addition to the general testing and maintenance activities. During the maintenance, approx. 1,200 additional employees of the manufacturer and special firms supported the maintenance team of the KKP. The entire team performed more than 7,000 individual tasks.
“We had set out to complete a comprehensive program for the maintenance. I am very happy with the implementation,” says Roman Zofka, head of unit 1, in retrospect. “The highlights were maintenance and maintenance work in the area of control rod drives and on two forced circulation pumps. We have updated the reactor water cleaning system and carried out a general overhaul of a reactor feed pump, a main condensation pump and two main water cooling pumps. Construction and maintenance measures were also carried out on two of the four water cooling channels. Mountings in cooling and ventilation systems were optimized and the reserve network transformer was routinely serviced. In addition, comprehensive work was carried out on the generator and internal low-voltage network.”
“With the end of the maintenance we can again continue the secure and successful operation of unit 1,” summarizes Michael Wenk, head of EnBW Kernkraft GmbH management. “The plant’s green power production makes an important contribution to securing supplies in Baden-Wuerttemberg and simultaneously relieves the state’s CO2 balance.”
The maintenance work took place under the supervision of the Umweltministerium Baden-Württemberg (Baden-Wuerttemberg Ministry of the Environment) and was overseen by order of the Ministerium von Gutachtern des TÜV (Ministry of Assessors of the TÜV), the KeTAG (Kerntechnik-Gutachterarbeitsgemeinschaft Baden-Württemberg) (Baden-Wuerttemberg Nuclear Technology Assessor Syndicate) and the MPA (Staatliche Materialprüfungsanstalt, Stuttgart) (National Material Testing Laboratory, Stuttgart). After accepting work, the Ministry of the Environment approved starting the plant up again. During the maintenance, four events were identified which were reported to the regulatory authorities in due time and classified at the lowest level of reporting. The events had no effect on the security of the plant, staff or environment.
Unit 1 of the Philippsburg nuclear power plant is a boiling water reactor with a capacity of 926 megawatts. The plant has been in operation since 1979 and produced over seven billion kilowatt hours of power in 2007.