Sweden’s nuclear reactor shutdown in Ringhals 4 was extended until the end of February
Swedish company Vattenfall said on Friday it had delayed the restart of the Ringhals 4 nuclear reactor by about three weeks to February 23, in a further setback to power supplies in the Nordics and Baltics. Vattenfall said in September that the reactor’s pressure vessel, a radioactive component, had been damaged during maintenance and would be out of service until January 31.
“The repair of the pressure device is in progress,” said a regulatory statement to the Nord Pool power exchange on Friday. The company’s new and “more detailed action plan” showed repairs would continue until February 23, the company added.
The extended outage at Ringhals 4, which has an installed capacity of 1,130 megawatts (MW), comes at a critical time as energy prices soar across Europe and countries struggle to ensure there is enough power for the coming winter. Pontus de Mare, head of system operations at grid operator Svenska Kraftnat, told Reuters the delay was unfortunate but had little impact on the operator’s assessment of risks of power shortages and outages in the coming months.
“In our analyses, we had already reckoned with a fairly large risk that Ringhals 4 could be off-grid longer (than until January 31) and we have based various measures on that. It is of course not welcome, but it is not going away. things.” Svenska Kraftnat said on November 9 that the Ringhals 4 outage and reduced opportunities to import electricity meant that Sweden was in a more sensitive position regarding electricity supply this winter than a year ago.
To add to the uncertainty, Sweden’s largest nuclear reactor, Oskarshamn 3, will be shut down for maintenance from December 9 to December 18. Vattenfall said in September that damage to the pressure vessel forced Ringhals to build a full-scale model of the reactor. 12 meters (39 ft) high structure for training before repairs could take place.
In neighboring Finland, the start-up of regular production from the long-awaited new Olkiluoto 3 reactor was recently pushed back to January 22, and its energy authority said this week that risks of blackouts had increased due to uncertainty in domestic production and foreign imports.
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