Bad weather causes problems at Romania’s Cernavoda nuclear power plant

Reactor 1 of the Cernavoda nuclear power plant was disconnected from the national power system on Tuesday afternoon, after one of the unit’s power discharge lines suffered some damages due to the bad weather. “Due to external causes, the Unit 1 of the Cernavoda nuclear power plant was disconnected from the National Power System (SEN) in the afternoon of November 8, 2016, at 15:37, due to a damage at the 400 KV power discharge line into SEN,” reads the statement from Nuclearelectrica, the state-owned company that managed the nuclear power plant. The damage, which occurred due to the bad weather in the area, triggered the automatic disconnection of the unit 1’s turbogenerator from SEN. This has led to a reduction of power, which made Cernaova specialists take the decision to carry out some additional work, which could only be done if the reactor is shut down. Once this work is completed, the reactor will be reconnected to the national system. In the first part of this year, Nuclearelectrica decided a planned shutdown of the reactor 1 for 51 days, longer than usual, which reduced the amount of sold electricity by 7.1% in the first half, reports local Profit.ro. The company posted a net profit of EUR 14.3 million in the first nine months of the year, down 51% compared to the same period in 2015. Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com