The Dukovany nuclear power plant will shut down the first unit on Friday due to the planned replacement of part of the fuel, inspections and servicing of the equipment. This unit will not generate electricity until the end of the year. The spokesman of the power plant, Jiří Bezděk, told ČTK today. The planned shutdown of the second unit, which began at the end of September, could, according to the current assumption of the power engineers, end next week. In the meantime, two of the four Dukovany units will be in operation.
According to the spokesman, the power plant will use several days of concurrence of two outages to maintain cooling towers. “The outage will have no effect on the customer,” he said.
The Dukovany power plant has four units with a total installed capacity of 2040 megawatts. Due to the regular replacement of part of the fuel, units number three and four were already standing this year.
The second Dukovany unit has not been producing electricity since 25 September. According to today’s ČEZ report, the main work in this unit was completed by power engineers in recent days. But they will still do a number of important tests and trials there.
According to ČEZ, this shutdown was one of the most demanding in the history of the power plant due to the coronavirus epidemic. “We have considered a lot of work and schedule, but fuel change, inspections and safety-relevant modifications are a necessity for us,” said Bohdan Zronek, Director of the Nuclear Energy Division. He noted that working with the risk of quarantine, drapes and all other measures is significantly more demanding.
In the first unit, which will be open from Friday, the power engineer will exchange part of the fuel for fresh one. According to the report, they also plan to carry out 26 major technical and investment events there. “Now we focus on both the tests and licenses of the second unit before its re-commissioning and at the same time on the gradual decommissioning of the ‘number one’, but I believe that we will manage it,” said Roman Havlín, director of the Dukovany power plant.
The Dukovany nuclear power plant has produced almost 460 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity since the start of operations in 1985, which, according to ČEZ, would be enough to cover consumption in the Czech Republic for almost eight years.
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