Nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced b ...
station (french: Centrale nucléaire de Penly) is found some northeast of
Dieppe
Dieppe (; Norman: ''Dgieppe'') is a coastal commune in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of northern France.
Dieppe is a seaport on the English Channel at the mouth of the river Arques. A regular ferry service runs to Newha ...
. It lies on the border of two French municipalities:
Penly
Penly is a former commune in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region in northern France. On 1 January 2016, it was merged into the new commune of Petit-Caux.Saint-Martin-en-Campagne in the département of
Seine-Maritime
Seine-Maritime () is a department of France in the Normandy region of northern France. It is situated on the northern coast of France, at the mouth of the Seine, and includes the cities of Rouen and Le Havre. Until 1955 it was named Seine-Inféri ...
,
Normandy
Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...
, on the
English Channel
The English Channel, "The Sleeve"; nrf, la Maunche, "The Sleeve" (Cotentinais) or ( Jèrriais), (Guernésiais), "The Channel"; br, Mor Breizh, "Sea of Brittany"; cy, Môr Udd, "Lord's Sea"; kw, Mor Bretannek, "British Sea"; nl, Het Kana ...
coast. It employs France's only working funicular railway in industrial use.
Data
The plant employs about 670 people full-time and is owned and operated by the French company
Électricité de France
Électricité de France S.A. (literally ''Electricity of France''), commonly known as EDF, is a French multinational electric utility company, largely owned by the French state. Headquartered in Paris, with €71.2 billion in revenues in 2 ...
. Water from the English Channel is used for cooling.
The two PWR units are of the 1330 MWe class. The installed total output is 2764 MW, which means the plant is about average for French nuclear plants. It feeds on average about 18 billion kilowatt-hours per year into the public grid, corresponding to about 80% of the current annual consumption of Normandy. It is about ten kilometres from Dieppe.
Proposed third and fourth reactors
In January 2009, the French government announced that a third reactor, the second French EPR reactor, would be built in Penly. Construction was announced for 2012 with connection to the grid following in 2017.
GDF Suez
Engie SA is a French multinational utility company, headquartered in La Défense, Courbevoie, which operates in the fields of energy transition, electricity generation and distribution, natural gas, nuclear, renewable energy and petroleum.
...
was to own a part of the plant, with the majority taken by EDF. However, in 2010 GDF Suez withdrew from the project.
In 2011, following the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
The was a nuclear accident in 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan. The proximate cause of the disaster was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which occurred on the afternoon of 11 March 2011 and ...
, EDF postponed public consultations putting in doubt the 2012 construction start date. In February 2013, the Minister of Industrial Renewal
Arnaud Montebourg
Arnaud Montebourg (; born 30 October 1962) is a French politician, lawyer and entrepreneur who served as the Minister of Industrial Renewal from 2012 to 2014,renewable energy
Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources that are naturally replenished on a human timescale. It includes sources such as sunlight, wind, the movement of water, and geothermal heat. Although most renewable energy ...
along with his confidence in the EPR as a competitive project in foreign countries.
In 2019, EDF is seeking a site for the construction of a pair of EPR reactors, and Penly is considered as one of the lead contenders.La Normandie prête à accueillir un nouveau réacteur EPR /ref>
Accidents and incidents
9 June 2004 - Weakly radioactive water was leaked into the sea from the reserve tank of a reactor's secondary circuit.
11 October 2011 - A subcontractor employee had localised contamination on his face.
5 April 2012 - 10 Fire engines attended a small fire within a reactor building. The operating company later reported two small oil fires inside the reactor building from a leaking oil pipe were extinguished with nobody hurt and no environmental impact. The detection of smoke caused the reactor to be automatically shut down.
6 April 2012 - As a consequence of the incident of 5 April 2012 a joint had leaked radioactive water into collection tanks inside the reactor building.
The incident was classified as 1 (lowest) on the 7 point
International Nuclear Event Scale
The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) was introduced in 1990 by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in order to enable prompt communication of safety significant information in case of nuclear accidents.
The s ...