Tach,
The Slovenian nuclear authority on Thursday said it had overreacted by issuing an European Union-wide alarm after a routine incident at the Krsko nuclear power plant. Krsko had shut down its 696-megawatt reactor two hours after it developed a primary coolant leak. When the plant issued the alert, it was passed on to all 27 European Union member states. No discharge of radioactive matter to the environment occurred."Yes, we were too hasty to report the incident in Krsko to the European early-warning system ECURIA as dangerous," said Marjan Tkavc of the Slovenian Nuclear Safety Administration (SNSA).In retrospect, the review of the incident, a leakage of the coolant, was "overly conservative," Tkavc told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
"It was the first time we had a leak in the primary cooling system," Tkavc said. "It is also an unusual event internationally, so to us the concern and the report to Brussels seemed justified."
He stressed that Ljubljana informed Brussels as soon as it was clear the problem was under control. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna meanwhile rated the Krsko incident as the lowest-level emergency on its scale.The SNSA also faulted by sending out a warning form to neighbouring countries - in which somebody forgot to strike-through the word "exercise" - which caused additional confusion, Tkavc admitted.The alert by Slovenia caused EU-wide alarm Wednesday evening. The coolant leak forced a shutdown of the plant, but was not dangerous, the Krsko chief executive, Stane Rozman said Thursday."We at the plant handled it properly. It was the foreseen security procedure for such cases," he told Radio Slovenija. The problem was located and would be eliminated "within a few days," he said, but would not comment on the SNSA's handling of the incident.The Krsko nuclear power facility was constructed in eastern Slovenia, not far from its border with Croatia, by the US-based Westinghouse and brought online in January 1982.Following the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, Slovenia and Croatia litigated over the plant for a decade, finally agreeing to split the benefits and liabilities, including the problem of nuclear waste storage, down the middle, starting in 2002.Croatian media on Thursday angrily reacted to the incident because the country was not informed of the incident until three hours later, though Krsko is just 30 kilometres away from the capital Zagreb."Croats were the last to find out" and "Krsko is a permanent threat to Zagreb" were some of the newspaper headlines.The incident, though small, is likely to re-ignite the debate over the safety of nuclear power at a time when it is increasingly being hailed as a way to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.Nuclear safety is a highly sensitive subject in the EU, with several member states - notably Italy and Germany - vowed to phase out the use of nuclear power.Bowing to EU demands, Bulgaria shut down four Soviet-era nuclear generators at its power plant in Kosloduy in 1999 and 2006, leaving it with two modern, 1,000-megawatt Russian-built generators.Another former Communist-bloc EU state, Lithuania, is due to shut down the Soviet-built Ignalina nuclear plant by the end of next year.Krsko is due to remain online until 2023, though the nuclear present storage waste would be filled a dozen years earlier. Following de-commission, the plant would be dismantled until 2036, reports say.
Viel Wirbel um nichts.... Gott sei dank
Alles meine eigene Meinung....wie immer...
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