The Civaux

Nuclear Power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by ...

Plant is located in the commune of

Civaux Civaux () is a Communes of France, commune in the Vienne (department), Vienne Departments of France, department, in the Regions of France, region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. See also *Communes of the Vienne department *Civaux Nuclear Power Pla ...

(

Vienne Vienne may refer to: Places *Vienne (department), a department of France named after the river Vienne *Vienne, Isère, a city in the French department of Isère * Vienne-en-Arthies, a village in the French department of Val-d'Oise * Vienne-en-Bessi ...

) at the edge of

Vienne River The Vienne (; , ) is a major river in south-western France. It is long. It is a significant left tributary of the lower Loire. It supports numerous hydroelectric dams, and it is the main river of the northern part of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine regio ...

between

Confolens Confolens ( ; Limousin: ''Cofolents'', ) is a commune in southwestern France. It is one of the two sub-prefectures of the Charente department. Confolens is the administrative center of a largely rural district, which has seen the development ...

(60 km upstream) and

Chauvigny Chauvigny (; Poitevin dialect, Poitevin: ''Chôvigni'') is a Communes of France, commune in the Vienne (department), Vienne Departments of France, department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Regions of France, region in western France. Chauvigny is locat ...

(14 km downstream), and 44 km south-east of

Poitiers Poitiers is a city on the river Clain in west-central France. It is a commune in France, commune, the capital of the Vienne (department), Vienne department and the historical center of Poitou, Poitou Province. In 2021, it had a population of 9 ...

. It has two operating units that were the precursors to the

European Pressurized Reactor The EPR is a Generation III+ pressurised water reactor design. It has been designed and developed mainly by Framatome (part of Areva between 2001 and 2017) and Électricité de France (EDF) in France, and by Siemens in Germany. In Europe, this ...

, being the "N4 stage". Designed for a net power output of 1450

MWe The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named in honor o ...

per unit, power was uprated to 1500 MWe in 2010. The Civaux plant uses ambient air and water from the Vienne River for cooling. As of 2022, 1300 people work at the plant. The

cooling tower A cooling tower is a device that rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a coolant stream, usually a water stream, to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove heat and cool the ...

s of Civaux Nuclear Power Plant are 178 metres in height, which are the highest among those of EDF's nuclear power plants.Document Agence française de sécurité sanitaire de l'environnement et du travail
10 octobre 2007

Events

* On 12 May 1998 there was a leak on an elbow in a pipe of the reactor coolant system. Water leaked out at the rate of 30 cubic meters per hour. It was classified as an

INES Ines or INES may refer to: People * Ines (name), a feminine given name, also written as Inés or Inês * Saint Ines or Agnes (), Roman virgin–martyr * Eda-Ines Etti (stage name: ''Ines''; born 1981), Estonian singer Places * Doña Ines, a volca ...

level-2 event. * Civaux was a proposed target in the

1998 World Cup terror plot From March to May 1998, a terror plot against the 1998 FIFA World Cup in France was uncovered by European law enforcement agencies. More than 100 people were arrested in seven countries as a result of the plot, although only some of them were tri ...

; it was planned that

Armed Islamic Group The Armed Islamic Group (GIA, from ; ) was one of the two main Islamist insurgent groups that fought the Algerian government and army in the Algerian Civil War. It was created from smaller armed groups following the 1992 military coup and ar ...

terrorists would crash a hijacked aeroplane into the plant on 15 June 1998. The plot was foiled with a mass arrest of conspirators on 26 May.

Reactors

References

Nuclear power stations in France Buildings and structures in Vienne (department) 2002 establishments in France {{powerstation-stub