Planned outage of unit 1 at Czech Dukovany begins today, to last until February

A planned outage of unit 1 at the Dukovany Nuclear Power Plant will begin today. Plant staff will replace part of the fuel with fresh fuel, carry out maintenance and inspect equipment. They will begin reducing output two hours after noon, and the unit will stop supplying electricity to the grid in the evening. Jiří Bezděk, the plant's spokesperson, told the Czech News Agency.

The outage is expected to end in the second half of February. The Dukovany plant has four units, with the remaining three in operation.

Over the weekend, plant staff will primarily cool down unit 1. Full-scale maintenance and servicing of equipment in the primary and secondary circuits will begin on Monday. More than 18,000 work tasks must be completed during the outage. "Among the most demanding in terms of both time and technical complexity are the cleaning of steam generator number five and the upgrade of the backup generator's control and safety system," the spokesperson said.

Key work during the outage is carried out 24 hours a day. Plant personnel will therefore face an exceptional workload even over the Christmas holidays. "Outages of our nuclear units are determined by fuel cycles. In addition, Christmas is a relatively favourable period in terms of consumption," said Bohdan Zronek, a member of the ČEZ board of directors and director of its nuclear energy division. According to him, the scope of the work carried out depends on regular inspections as well as investments in equipment refurbishment.

Czechia has six nuclear units at two power plants. Dukovany supplied 14.7 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity to the transmission grid last year and 14.2 TWh so far this year. The Temelín power plant generated 15 TWh of electricity last year.

The Dukovany Nuclear Power Plant currently has four units, which were commissioned between 1985 and 1987. ČEZ has previously said it wants to operate them for at least 60 years. The contract to build two additional units at Dukovany was awarded to Korean company KHNP. Geological surveys for these units began in August this year.