Temelín nuclear power plant in Czechia begins planned outage of Unit 1

The Temelín nuclear power plant began a planned outage of Unit 1 today, which will last about two months. During the outage, plant staff will, for example, replace some of the fuel assemblies. As planned, operations staff disconnected the turbogenerator from the transmission grid at 21:00. Marek Sviták, spokesperson for the Temelín power plant, told the Czech News Agency (ČTK).

„Over the weekend, the technology will gradually cool down. For example, in the primary circuit we will lower the water temperature by approximately 300 degrees. We will begin opening the reactor once it has cooled, meaning on Monday. Opening the reactor will take about four days,“ he said.

During the outage, plant staff will carry out 71 investment projects focused on modernisation and further strengthening the plant’s safety. These include modernising the safety system that supplies the backup batteries, replacing the control system for the diesel generator’s exciter, and continuing the modernisation of the plant’s control system.

„We schedule outages of nuclear units to avoid having them overlap. This is important for the transmission grid and for our suppliers’ staffing capacity. That is why the start of the Temelín outage again follows the end of the outage at Dukovany,“ said Bohdan Zronek, a member of the board of directors of ČEZ and director of its nuclear energy division.

About a thousand people, including contractors, will take part in the outage. This is the first planned outage at Temelín this year. The two-month outage of Unit 2 will begin in mid-October. An unplanned outage of Temelín Unit 1 occurred in the second half of March. It lasted just under four days while a valve in one of the three technical water systems was repaired. Since the beginning of the year, the Temelín power plant has generated 4.7 terawatt-hours of electricity.