Eskom says it has taken Unit 1 of the Koeberg nuclear station offline for a planned refuelling outage after a safe record-setting continuous run of 474 days.<\/p>\n
The energy firm said that refuelling outage takes just over a month and the unit is expected back online towards the end of October 2016.<\/p>\n
Koeberg Unit 1 has been on stream without any interruption since its statutory three-month refuelling outage in February 2015, Eskom said.<\/p>\n
Koeberg Unit 2 is currently operating optimally and is contributing 930MW to the national grid, the state firm said.<\/p>\n
“Every 15 to 18 months, each of the two units at Koeberg is shut down for refuelling, inspection and maintenance. This routine maintenance is part of Eskom\u2019s 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.”<\/p>\n
Eskom explained that during the routine outages, one third of the used nuclear fuel is replaced with new fuel.<\/p>\n
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