South Africa: Eskom's Koeberg Unit 1 taken offline for maintenance

The commercial nuclear power station, Eskom's Koebreg in South Africa has carried its Unit 1 offline for repairing due to rising leak rate, according to a report by The Citizen.

The power station reportedly observed an increasing leak rate earlier on Sunday, on one of its 3 steam generators. Even though the leakage wasn't out of safety units Eskom decided to take Koeberg Unit 1 offline for routine maintenance, repairing, and refueling, scheduled to begin from 2021, February. The Koeberg Unit 1 is however expected to start from 2021, May.

#EskomMediaStatementKoeberg Unit 1 taken offline for repairs, routine maintenance and refueling outage@News24 @SABCNews @NewzroomAfrika @eNCA @IOL pic.twitter.com/9wxzCD0Qdt

— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) January 4, 2021

In a statement released by the Eskom Hld SOC, on Twitter, it reads in part;

"The steam generator is a tubular heat exchanger which mechanically dries the steam produced during the nuclear power generation process. Shutting down the plant takes several hours, and the process is still underway – once shut down, fuel will be unloaded from the reactor core to enable maintenance activities to be conducted, and the cause of the increased leak rate to be addressed. There is no risk to plant, personnel, or the environment. Unit 2 continues to safely operate and generate at full power".

Days after the load shedding by Eskom due to low electricity demand, the power utility to the lower demand said that it would use the possibility to replenish the emergency generation resources in preparation for the expected higher demand when the economic activity resumes in January.

Eskom in the statement quoted, "during this period Eskom will also continue to pursue increased reliability maintenance as planned and previously communicated. While this will put pressure on the generation plant, maintenance is necessary in order to improve the reliability and performance of the power stations. We currently have 9 170MW on planned maintenance, while another 11 334MW capacity is unavailable due to unplanned maintenance. Eskom teams are working around the clock to return as many of these units to service as soon as possible".

Eskom has however urged the people of South Africa to use the electricity wisely since the systems are vulnerable.