Belleville Nuclear Power Plant

Belleville Nuclear Power Plant
Belleville Nuclear Power Plant
	The Belleville NPP
Official name	Centrale Nucléaire de Belleville
Country	France
Location	Belleville-sur-Loire
Coordinates	47°30′35″N 2°52′30″E / 47.50972°N 2.87500°E
Status	Operational
Construction began	Unit 1: May 1, 1980; Unit 2: August 1, 1980
Commission date	Unit 1: June 1, 1988; Unit 2: January 1, 1989
Owner(s)	Électricité de France;
Operator(s)	EDF
Nuclear power station
Reactor type	PWR
Reactor supplier	Framatome
Cooling towers	2 × Natural Draft
Cooling source	Loire River
Thermal capacity	2 × 3817 MWth
Power generation
Units operational	2 × 1310 MW
Make and model	P4 REP 1300
Nameplate capacity	2620 MW
Capacity factor	72.60%
Annual net output	16,662 GW·h (2016)
External links
Website	www.edf.fr/centrale-nucleaire-belleville
Commons	Related media on Commons
	[edit on Wikidata]

The Belleville Nuclear Power Plant is located in Belleville-sur-Loire (Cher) near Léré, Cher, along the Loire River between Nevers (75 kilometres (47 mi) upstream) and Orléans (100 kilometres (62 mi) downstream). It employs approximately 620 people and consists of two large 1,300 MW P4 nuclear reactors. Its cooling water comes from the Loire River.

Key information

The site spans 170 hectares and is located on a flood-safe, 4.6-meter-high platform. Each year it produces an average of 19 billion kilowatt hours fed to the electricity grid, and thus covers about four percent of French electricity production.

With the construction of the first reactor was started on May 1, 1980, and it began operation October 14, 1987. The second unit started construction August 1, 1980 and began operation July 6, 1988. The shutdown of the reactors is planned for the years 2028 and 2029 for unit 1 and 2.

Safety

In May 2001 construction-related defects were observed in this plant, along with four other sites.

The emergency cooling system of the two-phase nuclear power plant has a reserve water tank at the bottom of the reactor building. In the event of a defect in the primary cooling circuit that causes it to no longer contribute to cooling, the water from the reserve tank is automatically fed into the cooling system. Inspections in May 2001 showed, however, that this automatic feeding of the water was unreliable, because under some circumstances the pressure of the heated water may block the water slide.

The French nuclear regulatory authority ASN initially classified this disruption of the emergency cooling systems as stage 1 on the international scale of nuclear events (INES), but later assigned it the stage 2 classification. The operating company EDF then built the slider so that excess pressure can no longer lead to a blockage.

In 2017 the French nuclear regulator Autorité de sûreté nucléaire (ASN) placed Belleville under increased supervision because of "several failures by the operator in identifying and analysing the consequences of anomalies affecting certain safety-critical equipment". Belleville has had eight Level 1 events on the International Nuclear Event Scale.^[1]