New technical problems at Romania's Cernavoda power plant

The second unit of the Cernavoda nuclear power plant was disconnected from the national energy system on Thursday morning, March 29, due to a dysfunction at the electrical process system in the classical part of the power plant, according to an announcement of Nuclearelectrica, the state-owned company that operates the power plant. This is the third technical incident at Cernavoda in less than a week. On March 25, the first unit of the power plant was disconnected from the national energy system also due to a malfunction at the classical part of the plant, which took about 48 hours to fix. On the same day, the company also announced that the second unit would function at reduced power due to a technical issue that needed fixing. “There is no connection between the power reduction of Unit 2 from March 25 2018 and the automated disconnection of the reactor from today, March 29 2018,” the company announced on Thursday, local Mediafax reported. The company’s management also explained that the technical problems appear at the classical part of the power plant, while the nuclear reactors function without problems. They also pointed out that these unplanned shutdowns are normal and that the period of these shutdowns at the Cernavoda power plant has been lower than at other similar plants worldwide. However, prime minister Viordica Dancila decided on Thursday to send her Control Body at Cernavoda to investigate the recent incidents. The Cernavoda nuclear power plant has two functioning units with a combined capacity of 1,400 MW, which cover about 18-20% of Romania’s electricity consumption. editor@romania-insider.com