A disturbing series of events at China’s flagship Taishan two-unit nuclear power station is raising questions about what is going on at the 3,200-MW pressurized water reactor site. It’s disturbing because the still unclear events mirror what has happened in previous major nuclear accidents around the world, including confusion, obfuscation, lying, and coverup. That the Chinese government is particularly secretive adds to the mystery.
On Monday (June 14), CNN reported, “The US government has spent the past week assessing a report of a leak at a Chinese nuclear power plant, after a French company that part owns and helps operate it warned of an ‘imminent radiological threat,’ according to US officials and documents reviewed by CNN.”
The warning, which came from France’s Framatome, which supplied the reactors, to the U.S. Department of Energy in a memo which CNN obtained. France’s Electricity de France (EDF) owns a 30% share of the plant, which employs the long-troubled EPR (nee Evolutionary Power Reactor) reactor design.
Particularly troubling is that CNN said that Framatome said, “The warning 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.”
Later on Monday, the Associated Press reported that Framatome issued a cryptic statement that the plant is dealing with a “performance issue, and that, “According to the data available, the plant is operating within safety parameters.”
Bloomberg reported Monday that EDF “has called for an extraordinary board meeting with majority owned China General Nuclear Power Corp. or CGN, to discuss the increased concentration of inert gases at the Unit 1 reactor in Guandong.” EDF said that suggests some deterioration of the coating on “a few fuel rods” in primary loop of the PWR.
That’s about all known at the moment, but the situation warrants further watching. The history of modern nuclear accidents from Three Mile Island to Chernobyl to Fukushima suggests wariness, given consistent government and industry misstatements, minimization, and coverups.
Thaishan in southern China’s Guandong province began construction in 2006 and unit 1 was commissioned and connected to the grid in 2018, the first EPR to enter commercial operation. Unit 2 connected to the grid a year later. Construction projects in Finland and France have faced enormous problems and are still not ready to operate.
–Kennedy Maize
(kenmaize@gmail.com)