The Dampierre nuclear power plant is located in the town of

Dampierre-en-Burly Dampierre-en-Burly () is a commune in the Loiret department in north-central France. See also *Communes of the Loiret department The following is the list of the 325 communes of the Loiret department of France. The communes cooperate in th ...

(

Loiret Loiret (; ) is a department in the Centre-Val de Loire region of north-central France. It takes its name from the river Loiret, which is contained wholly within the department. In 2019, Loiret had a population of 680,434.

), 55 km upstream of Orleans and 110 km downstream of Nevers, it uses water from the

Loire The Loire (, also ; ; oc, Léger, ; la, Liger) is the longest river in France and the 171st longest in the world. With a length of , it drains , more than a fifth of France's land, while its average discharge is only half that of the Rhône ...

for cooling. Approximately 1,100 people work at the site.

Seismic risk

According to a report by the Nuclear Safety Authority in October 2002, certain functions providing backup cooling for the reactor could not be ensured in the event of an earthquake.

Incidents

On 2 April 2001, during a refueling outage of unit 4, an operator made a mistake in following the correct loading pattern for the different fuel rod assemblies (of which 30% were

MOX fuel Mixed oxide fuel, commonly referred to as MOX fuel, is nuclear fuel that contains more than one oxide of fissile material, usually consisting of plutonium blended with natural uranium, reprocessed uranium, or depleted uranium. MOX fuel is an alt ...

). The reloading operation was stopped and the core completely unloaded. The incident was initially classified at Level 1 of the

INES Ines or INES may refer to: People * Ines (name), a feminine given name, also written as Inés or Inês * Saint Ines or Agnes (), Roman virgin–martyr * Eda-Ines Etti (stage name: ''Ines''; born 1981), Estonian singer Places * Doña Ines, a vo ...

scale, but reclassified as Level 2 by France's nuclear safety authority in 2007. On the night of 9 to 10 April 2007, reactor No. 3 went on emergency standby and remained so throughout the night; it was supplied with emergency power by an emergency generator.

EDF EDF may refer to: Organisations * Eclaireurs de France, a French Scouting association * Education for Development Foundation, a Thai charity * Électricité de France, a French energy company ** EDF Energy, their British subsidiary ** EDF Luminus, ...

triggered an emergency plan to 22h10. Throughout the night, teams acted in emergency mode, the reactor No. 3 having been deprived of its external power. The emergency generator worked well. The ASN has established a national crisis with the support of the IRSN. EDF and

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lifted the crisis the following morning at 8:15. Following this incident, the No. 3 reactor remained shut down for several weeks to correct the problem.https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/40/032/40032745.pdf?r=1

References

{{French nuclear power plants Nuclear power stations in France