The restart of the Doel 2 nuclear reactor, which stopped on Thursday morning, will normally take place on Saturday morning. It used to be Friday morning. Manager Engie Electrabel confirms this. It is the second nuclear reactor to be shut down in a short period of time.
According to spokeswoman Hellen Smeets, this morning at a quarter to ten, the reactor stopped automatically without safety risks. The cause is a drop in power, because one of the control rods, which controls nuclear fission in the reactor, fell into the reactor after a short circuit. It is therefore an accident in the nuclear part of the reactor.
Initially the restart was scheduled on Friday at 9.45, but now it is estimated that this will take place the next day, at 7 on Saturday. Further work and tests are underway to determine when the reactor can actually be restarted, spokeswoman Hellen Smeets told the news agency Thursday evening. Belgian.
On Monday, Tihange 3 also stopped unexpectedly. This left four of the six power plants running. The seventh plant – Doel 3 – was definitively disconnected from the network at the end of September and is therefore no longer available. Currently, 3.5 of the 5 gigawatts of nuclear capacity are still available, now that Doel 2 and Tihange 3 have stopped.
The failure of Doel 2 on Thursday apparently caused little disruption to the electricity market. There is a lot of energy available from solar panels, traders said.
How dangerous exactly is nuclear power? In the video below we list all the pros and cons of nuclear energy.
