Aerial view of the Fessenheim nuclear power plant. – SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP
The second reactor of the Fessenheim nuclear power plant, automatically stopped Friday morning, four days before the final shutdown of the Alsatian power plant, finally restarted this Saturday afternoon and was reconnected to the network “at 6.30 pm”, we learned from concordant sources.
The reactor, which was initially scheduled to restart at 11:30 a.m., finally left on Saturday afternoon a few hours late, according to data available on the Electricity Transmission Network (RTE) site, manager of the high-voltage network. It was connected to the network at 6.30 p.m. and should reach full power in the evening.
“Maintenance operations” that can “take time”
“The restart operation (of reactor n ° 2) is in progress” and the “connection to the network” is scheduled for Saturday “at 5 pm”, had indicated in the morning a spokesman for EDF, insisting on the fact that this setback was “nothing major”. “This is the usual procedure”, the “operations of maintenance“May” take a little longer “than expected, he said, adding that” the reconnection (of the reactor) to the network will take place during the day “on Saturday. “There is nothing significant, the unit will be restarted when the network”, which has not been impacted, “will need it the most,” added the spokesman.
“When we have an automatic shutdown, we start the diagnosis and we restart as soon as we can,” we said on Friday at the plant, while the second and last reactor in operation of the dean of French nuclear power plants must be permanently disconnected from the network overnight from Monday to Tuesday. Reactor n ° 1 was finally shut down on February 22.
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