Blayais NPP total production 1988-2016 5 yr average

The Blayais Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear plant on the banks of the

Gironde estuary The Gironde estuary ( , US usually ; , ; , ) is a navigable estuary (though often referred to as a river) in southwest France and is formed from the meeting of the rivers Dordogne and Garonne just downstream of the centre of Bordeaux. Coverin ...

near Blaye, France operated by

Électricité de France Électricité de France SA (; ), commonly known as EDF, is a French multinational corporation, multinational electric utility company owned by the government of France. Headquartered in Paris, with €139.7 billion in sales in 2023, EDF ope ...

Description

The power plant has 4

pressurized water reactor A pressurized water reactor (PWR) is a type of light-water nuclear reactor. PWRs constitute the large majority of the world's nuclear power plants (with notable exceptions being the UK, Japan, India and Canada). In a PWR, water is used both as ...

s – producing 951 MW gross and 910 MW net each. They were commissioned from 1981 to 1983. The plant has 1200 EDF employees and 350 permanent workers. The four reactors produce about 25 TWh per year which is about 5% of the total electricity consumption in France (2015: 476 TWh). Since its commissioning, the Blayais nuclear power plant has produced more than 800 TWh. In its 2016 annual report, the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) finds that "the nuclear safety and environmental protection performance of the Blayais NPP on the whole matches ASN's general assessment of EDF and that it's radiation protection performance stands out positively", but asked for "more effective management of the nuclear waste produced during reactor outages".

Selected incidents

1999 flooding

On the evening of 27 December 1999, a combination of the incoming tide and high winds overwhelmed the sea walls at the plant and causing parts of the plant to be flooded.Generic Results and Conclusions of Re-evaluating the Flooding in French and German Nuclear Power Plants
J. M. Mattéi, E. Vial, V. Rebour, H. Liemersdorf, M. Türschmann, ''Eurosafe Forum 2001'', published 2001, accessed 21 March 2011 The event resulted in the loss of the plant's off-site power supply and knocked out several safety-related backup systems, resulting in a 'level 2' event on the

International Nuclear Event Scale The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) was introduced in 1990 by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in order to enable prompt communication of safety significant information in case of nuclear accidents. The s ...

. At the time, units 1, 2 and 4 were at full power, while unit 3 was shut down for refuelling. The operation of units 1 and 2 were affected by flood damage to a number of water pumps and distribution panels, all four units lost their 225 kV power supplies, while units 2 and 4 also lost their 400 kV power supplies. Diesel backup generators were employed to maintain power to plants 2 and 4 until the 400 kV supply was restored. Over the following days an estimated of water was pumped out of the flooded buildings. On 5 January, the regional newspaper Sud-Ouest ran the following headline without being contradicted: ''"Very close to a major accident"'', explaining that a catastrophe had been narrowly avoided.Sud-Ouest, 5 janvier 2000 - Centrale de Blaye : Très près de l'accident majeur
/ref> The flooding resulted in fundamental changes to the evaluation of flood risk at nuclear power plants, and in the precautions taken.Lessons Learned from 1999 Blayais Flood: Overview of the EDF Flood Risk Management Plan
Eric de Fraguier, EDF, published 2010-03-11, accessed 22 March 2011 In Germany the flooding prompted the

Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety The Federal Ministry for the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (; abbreviated BMUKN) is a cabinet-level ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has branches in Bonn and Berlin. The ministry was establi ...

to order an evaluation of the German nuclear power plants.

Opposition

The continued operation of the Blayais plant is opposed by the local anti-nuclear group 'TchernoBlaye' (a

portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.

of the French spelling of

Chernobyl Chernobyl, officially called Chornobyl, is a partially abandoned city in Vyshhorod Raion, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine. It is located within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, to the north of Kyiv and to the southwest of Gomel in neighbouring Belarus. ...

and

Blaye Blaye (; ) is a commune and subprefecture in the Gironde department in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in southwestern France. For centuries, Blaye was a particularly convenient crossing point for those who came from the north and went to Bordeaux or fur ...

, the nearest town), formed by

Stéphane Lhomme Stéphane Lhomme (; born 4 November 1965 in Bordeaux) is a French activist. He is president of Tchernoblaye association, and was spokesperson of "Sortir du nucléaire" Network from 2002 to 2010. Stéphane Lhomme was arrested in May 2006 and in ...

on 15 December 1999.L'histoire de TchernoBlaye
''TchernoBlaye'', accessed 29 March 2011

References

External links

{{Authority control Nuclear power stations in France Civilian nuclear power accidents Électricité de France