Dukovany nuclear plant starts planned outage of unit 1

Dukovany, South Moravia, Aug 16 (CTK) - The Dukovany nuclear power plant shut down its first generating unit today as planned for regular maintenance, equipment inspections and replacement of part of the fuel, an outage that will last until October, plant spokesman Jiri Bezdek said.

Operators began reducing the reactor's output at noon. The first turboset was disconnected at 16:13, and the unit stopped supplying electricity to the grid after the second turboset was disconnected at 18:00, according to Bezdek.

The remaining three Dukovany units are operating.

During the outage, power engineers will perform over 18,000 work tasks.

"A number of investments as well as standard and routine maintenance work await us. Key tasks include checks of the two main circulation pumps and steam generators, the emergency core cooling system and the backup diesel generators," said Roman Havlin, the plant's director.

"Maintenance and modernisation of the equipment are crucial for the planned safe and reliable operation of the nuclear units," said Bohdan Zronek, board member of Dukovany's operator CEZ and head of its nuclear power division. This outage will be followed by the planned outage of unit 2 at the Temelin nuclear power plant, he said.

This is the third outage of a Dukovany unit this year, with the last outage expected to start at the end of the year. Given the current transition of the units from 12-month to 16-month fuel cycles, the number of outages in one year should drop from four to three.

The Czech Republic has six nuclear units in two power plants. Dukovany produced 14.3 TWh of electricity last year, while Temelin, southern Bohemia, surpassed 16 TWh.

CEZ is preparing the construction of two new units at Dukovany, the first one expected to be ready in 2036. The contractor will be the Korean company KHNP, which the Czech government chose over France's EDF in the tender. The contract for the construction of the reactors at Dukovany should be signed by the end of next March.

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