Explosion at nuclear plant built by French firm behind Hinkley
AN EXPLOSION at a nuclear power plant run by French firm EDF – just 75 miles across the Channel – added to concerns over nuclear safety yesterday.
The company, which is planning Britain’s first nuclear power station in a generation, was forced to shut down its nuclear reactor at the Flamanville plant in Normandy after the blast caused a fire that left five people suffering from smoke inhalation.
While there was no nuclear risk, a French official described it as a ‘significant technical event’. EDF, whose controversial Hinkley Point plant in Somerset will be built with Chinese investment at a cost of £18billion, refused to provide inforroom
‘Degradation of reactors’
mation on the cause of the explosion.
But local prefect Jacques Witkowski said a fan had exploded after overheating in the turbine hall, where steam from the nuclear reactor produces electricity. Greenpeace has called for an urgent inquiry into the cause of the fire.
The explosion happened in an engine of Flamanville that is separate from its nuclear reactors, which were built in the 1980s.
Mr Witkowski said: ‘A fan exploded. It was a mechanical problem. The five employees present were evacuated for a slight intoxication related to the smoke. They are unharmed.
‘It is a significant technical event but it is not a nuclear accident.’
A fire crew took almost two and a half hours to extinguish the flames and the reactor will be shut down and disconnected from the electricity grid for a week.
In a statement, EDF said the fire was ‘immediately brought under control’ by its response team. It insisted that there were no safety consequences, but the incident follows a series of controversies.
Twenty of EDF’s 58 nuclear plants in France were shut down following safety checks last year and some reactors are still offline.
A third pressurised water reactor being built at Flamanville – the same model as will be used at Hinkley Point – has raised safety concerns. Two years ago the French nuclear safety authority found weaknesses in the steel used to construct the pressure vessel at the heart of the reactor.
The cost of building Hinkley Point, approval of which is still under review, was originally estimated at £10billion, but is now expected to reach £18 billion. However, some critics put its final price when it starts generating power in 2025 as high as £29billion.
The project is controversial for giving foreign governments control over Britain’s energy supply, as EDF is 85 per cent owned by the French state, while a third of the cost is being provided by Chinese investors.
Professor Paddy Regan, professor of nuclear physics at the University of Surrey, said yesterday of the explosion: ‘This looks as if it is a mechanical failure in a ventilator which works similarly to a fan in your house to cool down the plant, and many of these have oil-lubricated components, which may explain the reports that people suffered smoke inhalation.
‘It is not a good day and, while I don’t think there is any safety issue with Hinkley, I can see this will not play well with public perception of nuclear plants. It doesn’t help the argument for nuclear power.’
A spokesman for Greenpeace said last night: ‘The state of the French nuclear fleet is worrying as a whole. All this is in a context of serious degradation of French reactors, more than half of which are affected by hundreds of serious faults.’