Caorso Nuclear Power Plant

F1

Decommissioned Reactors ( gross ):

The nuclear power plant Caorso (Italian Centrale di -nuclear Caorso ) is a nuclear power plant at Caorso, Piacenza, Italy. The current owner and operator of the Società gestione impianti Nucleari ( SOGIN ). It went public in 1978 as the fourth and last nuclear power plant in Italy in operation. 1990, it was shut down after the referendum of 1987, which regulated the nuclear phase-out of Italy, as one of the last two of the four by this time in Italy commissioned nuclear power plants.

Reactor and containment

The Caorso nuclear power plant consisted of a boiling water reactor from General Electric with a net electrical output of 860 MW and a gross capacity of 882 MW. Thus, it was by far the most powerful nuclear power plant in Italy.

The containment of Caorso was a unique European design, which was otherwise only built in the U.S. and in Japan. It was a so-called Mark II containment, a development of General Electric, which compared to the previously built Mark I containment ( in use in Europe at the nuclear power plant of Santa María de Garoña and the nuclear power plant Muhlenberg ) showed some improvements. So a meltdown in the worst case ( to bad accident cooling) could be the Mark I quickly spread to the containment wall and melt them. When Mark II has been taken to ensure that the liquid core melt after melt-through and leaving the reactor vessel first, partly flows into a relatively deep concrete pit and secondly other partly distributed there when spread on the bottom floor in dozens, vertically downward so-called transfer pipes flows in and through these in including the spreading, water-filled condensing chamber falls and cools. This melting through the containment wall is very unlikely. Much later after the melting of the above-mentioned concrete pit about one meter thick, the bottom of the remainder of the melt, also falls into the condensation chamber, where it is cooled, whereby a through- melting of the containment the floor is unlikely. However, some other potential failure mechanisms of containment are nevertheless still present.

History

It was built from January 1, 1970 and for the first time critically on 31 December 1977. The reactor was first synchronized on 23 May 1978 the power grid. On 1 December 1981, the power plant went into commercial operation. In 1986, it was last used for electricity production. This year, the second highest electricity production was achieved with 5300 GWh by 1982 with 5733 GWh. After the disaster at Chernobyl NPP was not approached after a scheduled shutdown on 25 October 1986, the implementation of the fourth fuel change and political reasons stood still. The reactor was shut down as a result of the Italian nuclear phase on 1 July 1990 final. Up to now the decommissioning work are so advanced that the reactor can not be put into operation. It originated 1,880 cubic meters of radioactive waste and spent fuel in 1032, which corresponds to a weight of 187 tons.

A General Electric manager suggested in early 2010 to stop the demolition and to reactivate the nuclear power plant. However, approved on June 12 and 13, 2011 in a referendum on the re-entry into nuclear power, with a stake of 57%, 94.1 % of those voting against the re-entry.

Operating platform in the reactor building

Storage pool for spent fuel

Fuel assembly racks in the storage pool

Data of the reactor units

The nuclear power plant Caorso had a block:

472869
de