Photo by: Duane Daws
Unit 1 of the Koeberg nuclear power station, near Cape Town, will be shut down on Monday for a planned refuelling outage.
This outage will take just over a month, with the unit expected to be back on line towards the end of October.
Koeberg Unit 1 has been on stream without any interruption since its statutory three-month refuelling outage in February 2015.
Each of the two units at Koeberg is shut down every 15 to 18 months for refuelling, inspection and maintenance. This routine maintenance is part of Eskom’s overall maintenance programme for its fleet of generation units. Outages are scheduled so as to avoid having both units out of service at the same time and to avoid the winter months in each year.
During these routine outages, one-third of the used nuclear fuel is replaced with new fuel. Maintenance, plant modifications, inspections and statutory work to ensure that international safety standards continue to be met and that reliable plant performance continues, are performed.
“We are implementing our maintenance plan to increase the reliability of our plant, which will, in turn, increase our operating reserves and stabilise the grid. It is largely owing to this rigorous plant maintenance programme that we have had a stable supply of electricity for over a year now,” Eskom said in a statement.
Koeberg Unit 2 is currently operating optimally and is contributing 930 MW to the national grid.