Problems at China’s Taishan nuclear project – which could become the world’s largest nuclear station – are worse than the Chinese government has acknowledged, according to co-owner Electricite de France. CNN reported this week that the French state-owned company said that while radiation detected in the primary coolant circuit at one of the two 1,750-MW pressurized water reactors was “not an emergency” it is “a serious situation that is evolving,” and if the plants were in France, EDF would have shut the reactor “to avoid further degrading of the fuel rods and carry out an investigation, and avoid further damage to the industrial facility.”
The Chinese acknowledged some damage to fuel rod cladding but said that was within its margins for acceptable fuel performance.
EDF owns 30% of the project, with the majority owned by a Chinese government company, China General Nuclear Power Group. EDF’s subsidiary Framatome supplied its reactor technology, which has had a troubled history, and has supported operations at the site.
In June, CNN reported that a Framatome warning to the U.S. Department of Energy “included an accusation that the Chinese safety authority was raising the acceptable limits for radiation detection outside the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant in Guangdong province in order to avoid having to shut it down.” China’s nuclear safety regulators denied raising the radiation limits and that what was going on was “completely different from a radiological leakage” because “physical barriers are safe.”
And EDF spokesperson told CNN last week it “was detecting an increase in noble gas in a reactor, and that the company had publicly clarified its position to the Chinese plant’s owner and operator.”
The two Taishan reactors in Guandong province are part of a planned four-unit, 7,000 MW station. Unit 1 went into service in 2018 and unit 2 in 2019, the first of the French EPR reactor design, which has encountered serious construction delays in Finland and France.
–Kennedy Maize