Should we be surprised by the automatic shutdown of the reactor?

ARed alerts in the continuous press, panicked comments from anti-nuclear activists… On Wednesday, September 4, in the evening, the Flamanville EPR reactor automatically shut down, after having diverged for the first time the day before, at exactly 3:54 p.m.

“According to the first elements of the technical diagnosis, the shutdown could be linked to an inappropriate configuration of the installation,” said an EDF spokesperson. “The teams are carrying out the necessary technical checks and analyses following the procedures, then they will restart the reactor divergence.”

These shutdowns concern all reactors

In layman’s language, this automatic shutdown reflects a poor adjustment of one or another element of an extraordinarily complex system, covered in protections. “All the reactors have been through this!” jokes Jean Fluchère, former regional director of EDF in Rhône-Alpes. “When I started up the Bugey reactors, in 1978-1979, we had automatic shutdowns every half hour, to the point that it had become a joke,” recalls the former director of the plant.

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“A reactor is covered with a huge set of protections. It is normal that at startup, one or the other stammers, the main thing is to find which one and adjust the settings. Some protections are very finely tuned… I have experienced automatic shutdowns, for example […] Read more