Swedish meatball almost a meltdown

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - August 4, 2006, 03:19 PM

URL:

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,430164,00.html

 

 

Nuclear Mishap

 

A Close Call with Catastrophe in Sweden?

 

An observer has called last week's mishap in Sweden

the worst incident to befall a nuclear power plant

since the accident at Chernobyl.

 

Nobody was injured, but for 22 minutes, workers had

no idea what was happening in the reactor's core.

Swedish officials have taken half the country's

nuclear power plants offline until it can ensure their

safe operation.

 

DPA

Sweden's nuclear power station in Forsmark: the worst

nuclear incident since Chernobyl and Harrisburg?

Sweden's nuclear energy authority, SKI, has largely

completed its reconstruction of events in an accident

last week that led to the closure of a nuclear power

plant in the city of Forsmark and, ultimately,

the shutdown of half the country's nuclear plants as

a precautionary measure.

 

In the incident, two of the plant's four backup

generators malfunctioned when the plant experienced a

major power outage on July 25. According to officials,

who described the event as " serious, " a short-circuit

triggered the accident, which caused a cut in power to

the nuclear facility. Plant workers told Swedish media

that it came close to a meltdown.

 

In fact, the only thing that appears to have stopped a

catastrophe is the fact that two diesel backup

generators kicked in, enabling the Forsmark facility

to operate at least part of its emergency cooling

system. Still, for 20 minutes, workers were unable to

obtain information about the condition of the reactor

and they were only able to respond after 21 minutes

and 41 seconds, according to a report in Germany's

Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper.

 

Swedish media are reporting that a previously unknown

technical problem emerged during the emergency that

could also be present in all other Swedish nuclear

reactors.

 

In its first report, nuclear authority SKI claimed

that operators of the nuclear plant had reacted

correctly during the emergency. " In my opinion, the

media is exaggerating the issue, " said Jan Blomstrang,

a member of SKI's committee for reactor security. The

two generators that were still operating, he said,

could have provided sufficient energy for the reactors

if it had been necessary. The agency is expected to

release a comprehensive report in the coming days.

 

On Thursday, Swedish officials shut down two further

nuclear power plants as a safety precaution. Plant

operators said the move was necessary because they

could not guarantee the security of nuclear facilities

in the city of Oskarshamm. A spokesman for the company

that operates the Oskarshamm plant said he could not

rule out the possibility of an incident happening like

that at Forsmark.

 

After an emergency meeting of SKI officials, spokesman

Anders Bredfall said that both nuclear power plants in

Oskarshamm would be taken offline until investigators

were able to deteremine whether the backup generators

at that plant could fail in the same way as those in

Forsmark.

 

Official: Worst incident since Chernobyl

 

Swedish nuclear energy expert Lars-Olov Högland, head

of the construction department at Swedish utility

company Vattenfall -- and onetime boss at the Forsmark

reactor -- has described last week's problems as the

" worst incident since Chernobyl and Harrisburg, "

a reference to the 1979 meltdown at Three-Mile Island

in Pennsylvania.

 

He accused the plant's operators of trying to play

down the seriousness of the event. For their part,

officials at Swedish nuclear authority SKI have

rejected Högland's assessment, describing it as

" exaggerated. "

 

Following the latest shutdowns, only five of Sweden's

10 nuclear power plants are still operating.

 

Nuclear power accounts for close to half of the

electricity produced in Sweden and the shutdowns

triggered record price increases. But the Swedish

government's energy agency said the nation's

electricity supply was not currently at great risk

because it can rely more on hydropower during the

summer months.

 

Sweden is in the process of abandoning nuclear energy

-- a policy that has led to the shut down of two of

the country's total of 12 plants since 1999.

However, against a backdrop of concerns about climate

change and energy dependency, recent public opinion

polls indicate that an increasing number of Swedes

would like to go on using nuclear power.

 

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