News

Two incidents at Kola NPP in May

Publish date: June 5, 2003

The oldest nuclear power unit of the Kola NPP suffered two incidents in May.

On May 18th, 2003, the emergency protection system was triggered and the reactor no.1 was shut down. ABN reported that the emergency shut down did not take place, but only emergency protection system was triggered due to the fault data from the sensor measuring the frequency in the grid. On May 24th, the reactor was put back in operation. Five days later, on May 29th, 2003, at night turbogenerator no.2 was cut off the grid due to the human error. Equipment was not damaged, and the reactor remained in operation. It took the plant’s personnel 12 hours to connect the turbogenerator back to the grid. According to the media reports, both incidents did lead to lead to any radioactivity release, the situation remained safe. Suprisingly the first reactor was under maintenance from February 15th till May 13th, when special attention was paid to the further safe operation of the reactor, however, the recent incidents showed it is still not safe. The first reactor will celebrate its 30 years anniversary on June 29th. At the moment Kola NPP has reactor no.1 and no.3 in operation. The fourth reactor was shut down on June 1st due to the low demand of the electricity and is due to stay in reserve for at least one month. Reactor no.2 was shut down for maintenance and upgrade works on May 16th, it is scheduled to last for 105 days.