Czech Dukovany faces further outages lasting months, welds to affect 2017 as well

Outages at the Dukovany nuclear power plant will be extended again. The prolonged outages concern all four units and will collectively be extended by several months. This follows from the company's mandatory disclosure in the REMIT system, updated today.

After nearly a month and a half, the outages at the Dukovany nuclear power plant are being extended further. The extension will significantly affect all four units. Outages at units No. 1 and No. 4 will be extended to a total of 4 months.

Unit 1 will now not supply electricity to the grid from 21 January 2017 to 20 May 2017. The outage had originally been planned for just one month. The extended outages also concern Unit 2, which under the original plan was to be shut down only from 16 September to 31 December 2016. The outage is now scheduled to last until 15 March 2017. That is two and a half months longer.

The outage schedule has also changed for other units. Unit 3, which is undergoing an outage until 19 October this year, will also be shut down for an extended period in 2017. Data in the mandatory REMIT disclosure show that the unit will be offline for more than three months in total between August and November next year (5. 8. 2017 – 12. 11. 2017), instead of the originally planned two months.

The planned outages for Unit No. 4 have also been revised. This unit will now be scheduled for a 120-day outage. The outage is planned from 22. 4. 2017 to 19 August 2017. Until today's revision, the REMIT report contained data on outages in 2017 only for the periods from 1 to 13 January and from 24 to 31 December 2017 (20 days).

According to information from the spokesperson for the Dukovany nuclear power plant, more detailed inspections of welds will be carried out at the plant, while the units will also be prepared for further long-term operation.

The weld issue will involve expanded inspections of welds, which will also affect other equipment at the plant, such as its measurement and impulse lines.

The Dukovany nuclear power plant faces applications to extend its operating licences with the State Office for Nuclear Safety. The licence for Unit No. 2 expires this year, while the licences for Units No. 3 and 4 will also expire next year.

For Unit No. 1, the plant obtained a licence following a forced extension of the licensing process this year. The licence was granted indefinitely, subject to a number of conditions that must be met by specified deadlines.

The outages in last year alone, when only one of the four units was generating from 19 September to 28 December, cost utility group ČEZ approximately Kč 2.5 billion.