The French Nuclear Safety Authority (Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire or ASN) has reported that a generic incident is affecting the auxiliary systems of the diesel-powered emergency generators of the 1,300 MW reactors installed on 8 French nuclear power plants. A first defect was detected in March 2017 on an expansion tank of the diesel cooling system of the Golfech power plant. This defect was then discovered on all the 1,300 MW reactor backup engines.
As a result, the earthquake resistance of auxiliary diesels in the Belleville, Cattenom, Flamanville, Golfech, Nogent, Paluel, Penly and Saint-Alban nuclear power plants is at stake and the ASN considers that the operation of such emergency equipment may no longer be assured in the case of an earthquake. The incident is then ranked at level 2 of the international scale of nuclear and radiological events (International Nuclear Event Scale or INES) which has eight levels (from 0 to 7).
Therefore, the ASN has asked EDF, the operator of the plants, to reinforce the anchorages of all auxiliary diesel emergency systems within three weeks for at least one of the two emergency diesels and for one and a half month for the second one of the concerned reactors.
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