The Vandellòs Nuclear Power Plant is a
nuclear power plant in
Vandellòs located close to the
Coll de Balaguer
The Coll de Balaguer is a mountain pass in Catalonia, Spain. It is located at the point where the Catalan Pre-Coastal Range reaches the sea, in L'Almadrava, within the Vandellòs i l'Hospitalet de l'Infant municipality, Baix Camp.
Despite its s ...
pass (
Baix Camp
Baix Camp () is a comarca of Catalonia. It is one of the three comarques into which Camp de Tarragona was divided in the comarcal division of 1936.
Baix Camp is located on the coast, between Tarragonès to the northeast and Baix Ebre to the sou ...
comarca) in
Catalonia
Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a '' nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy.
Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the no ...
, Spain.
Unit one was a 508 MWe
carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide ( chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is t ...
gas cooled reactor
A gas-cooled reactor (GCR) is a nuclear reactor that uses graphite as a neutron moderator and a gas (carbon dioxide or helium in extant designs) as coolant. Although there are many other types of reactor cooled by gas, the terms ''GCR'' and to a ...
modeled on the
UNGG reactor at the
Saint Laurent Nuclear Power Plant
The Saint-Laurent Nuclear Power Station is located in the commune of Saint-Laurent-Nouan in Loir-et-Cher on the Loire – 28 km upstream from Blois and 30 km downstream from Orléans.
The site includes two operating pressurized w ...
in France. It was shut down on July 31, 1990, following an
accident
An accident is an unintended, normally unwanted event that was not directly caused by humans. The term ''accident'' implies that nobody should be blamed, but the event may have been caused by unrecognized or unaddressed risks. Most researche ...
that damaged one of its two
turbogenerator
A turbo generator is an electric generator connected to the shaft of a steam turbine or gas turbine for the generation of electric power. Large steam-powered turbo generators provide the majority of the world's electricity and are also used b ...
s on 19 October 1989. Important nuclear safety functions in the plant were impaired by the fire, and the event was later classified as a level 3 event in the
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 ...
.
Unit two is a 1087 MWe
PWR. The station's owners are: 72%
Endesa
Endesa, S.A. (, originally an initialism for ''Empresa Nacional de Electricidad, S.A''.) is a Spanish multinational electric utility company, the largest in the country. The firm, a majority-owned subsidiary of the Italian utility company Enel, ...
and 28%
Iberdrola
Iberdrola () is a Spanish multinational electric utility company based in Bilbao, Spain. Iberdrola has a workforce of around 34,000 employees serving around 31.67 million customers. Subsidiaries include Scottish Power (United Kingdom) ...
.
See also
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Nuclear power in Spain
Spain has five active nuclear power plants with seven reactors producing 21% of the country's electricity as of 2013.
A nuclear power moratorium was enacted by the Socialist government in 1983. For a time the country had a policy of phasing ...
References
External links
Nuclear Power Plants - Spainat the
Nuclear Tourist website.
NEA Profile - Spain
INES International Nuclear Event Scale.
Vandellos 1 NPP dismantling at the level 1(
PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
, 503KB).
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Nuclear power stations in Catalonia
Nuclear power stations using pressurized water reactors
Graphite moderated reactors
Civilian nuclear power accidents
Energy infrastructure completed in 1972
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