At the Dukovany plant in Czechia, ČEZ inspected Unit 3's reactor pressure vessel after eight years

During the outage of Unit 3 at the Dukovany nuclear power plant, technicians also inspected the reactor pressure vessel. They carry out an inspection of this scope on each of Dukovany's four units once every eight years. They have now confirmed that Unit 3 is ready for further operation. Plant spokesperson Jiří Bezděk told the Czech News Agency today. The unit has been undergoing a planned outage since 21 March and is expected to resume supplying electricity in June.

"In line with international practice, we want to operate all our units for at least sixty years. A key condition is having perfect knowledge of the condition of critical components, and especially the state of the reactor vessels," said Bohdan Zronek, a member of ČEZ's board of directors and director of its nuclear energy division.

Technicians began inspecting the reactor pressure vessel of Dukovany Unit 3 after removing all 349 fuel assemblies and all internal equipment. Using a special remotely operated manipulator, they examined the entire surface of the reactor centimeter by centimeter with ultrasound and eddy currents, and also carried out visual inspections. Sixteen experts took part in the work and also processed and evaluated the data.

"It was one of the most time-consuming tasks of the outage. During the inspection, the manipulator head traveled more than 25 kilometers along the inside of the reactor, covering an area of 130 square meters," said plant director Roman Havlín.

The experts collected around 50 gigabits (GB) of data. "The subsequent evaluation and analysis confirmed that the reactor pressure vessel was in satisfactory condition," the director said.

Czechia has six nuclear units at two power plants. Last year, Dukovany supplied 14.7 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity to the transmission grid, while Temelín generated 15 TWh. The Dukovany units were commissioned between 1985 and 1987.

ČEZ is preparing to build two more units at Dukovany. The final agreement with the selected supplier, South Korea's KHNP, was originally due to be signed on 7 May. The day before, the Regional Court in Brno blocked the signing with an interim measure. It did so at the request of French company EDF, which was unsuccessful in the tender. EDF challenged the decision of the Czech Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS), which had ruled that the tender was in order. The court has yet to rule on EDF's lawsuit.