RESTART OF UNIT No. 2 OF THE PAKS NPP IS APPROVED

The Nuclear Safety Directorate of the Hungarian Atomic Energy Authority assessed the request by the Paks NPP for restarting the operation of Unit No. 2 and by setting a number of conditions the approval of the request has been granted. Restart of the unit was hindered by the presence of the cleaning tank and the damaged fuel elements therein (damaged after a unsuccessful cleaning operation in April 2003) in the service pool No.1 for two reasons. First, the service pool occupied by the tank is necessary for fuel transport thus making it impossible to load fresh fuel assemblies into the reactor, second, at the time when the service pool and the reactor were connected the reactor was contaminated by the water in direct contact with the damaged fuel elements. Designing a fuel load pattern not necessitating larger amount of fresh fuel, and separating the volumes of the reactor and the pool could eliminate the hindering circumstances. The submitted request, which accounted for the fulfilment of all requirements set forth by the regulatory body in March 2004, also contained supporting independent expert opinions on the submitted analyses by leading institutions of the Hungarian nuclear community. The most important conditions set by the approval are as follows: · An extra reactor operator shall control the state of the service pool No.1. · The operating personnel shall be trained to cope with every conceivable disturbing circumstance. · The entire start-up procedure can only be performed if the autonomous control and instrumentation system of service pool No. 1 is operational and the primary circuit of the reactor of unit No. 1 is cleaned to the requested level. · The measurements taken during the stepwise start-up procedure shall be supported by independent expert opinions. A precondition of the approval is that during the elimination of the damaged fuel elements from the service pool No. 1, the unit No. 2 shall not be operating. In view of the approval, unit No. 2 may start a cycle of about 130 days. For the expiry of other licenses of the NPP, the operation may not go beyond the end of year 2004.