Ukraine: Reactor at Chernobyl power plant stopped for repairs

Source: BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union - Political Publication date: Feb 12, 2000

Text of report by Ukrainian television on 12th February

[0130-0210] [Presenter Svitlana Leontyeva] The No 3 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power station has been stopped for unplanned repairs. We recall that the reactor was stopped a weekago over a fault. This time the stop was caused, according to the State Nuclear Control Administration, by a fault in a weld of the reactor's safety unit. Eight such units produced in France were installed last year under a programme to improve the station's security. The Chernobyl nuclear power station's press service said that the company producing these units will replace the faulty unit with a new one. It is planned that, after the unit is replaced, the No 3 generating set will be reconnected to the power grid on 16th February. Publication date: Feb 12, 2000 ) 2000, NewsReal, Inc.

Link

http://beta.newsreal.com/cgi-bin/NewsService?osform_template=pages/newsrealStory&ID=newsreal&storypath=News/Story_2000_02_12.NRdb@2@19@3@413&path=News/Category.NRdb@2@7

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 13, 2000

Answers

Thanks for your continued posts, Carl. This is a concern because it affects energy production.

This unit went down because of a quality control problem; we've seen a lot of those in the past weeks. These kinds of welds are supposed to be done by certified welders who don't make mistakes, and then checked by x-ray. It should have never gotten out of the factory.

Lucky for them they caught it, and replacement is readily alvailable.

-- John (LITTMANNJ@AOL.COM), February 13, 2000.

Something's fundementally wrong (in preliminary assembly + NDT, or in installation + NDT, or in final testing and NDT) to let a weld flaw like this cause a shutdown. the French are pretty good in reactor systems....but if true, something went wrong, or was installed or operated wrong.

(NDT = Non-destructive testing. X-rays, ultrasonic testing, dye-penetration checks, etc all should have found this a long time ago. Even the preliminary hydro testing and plant runs should reveal this kind of crack, if it were this bad in a "safety" system.)

But the press release doesn't tell enough to figure out details.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), February 14, 2000.