The most demanding outage of a reactor Unit in operation history of Dukovany NPP commenced on 10.01.2009. During this outage at Unit 3, apart of standard refueling and regular checking of equipment, a number of modifications were implemented that were designed to increase Unit 3 affectivity and power capacity. This week the reactor was started up and both turbo-generators are going to be reconnected to the grid stepwise. The turbo-generators were completely modernised in such a way that they will be able to achieve capacity of 500MWe in the beginning of May.
The increase of power at one of four reactor Units is another step of an undergoing project called „SAFELY 16 TERA EDU“ which goal is safely production of 16TWH per year (in place of 14TWH today). Such a performance should be achieved by the power plant after 2012. Dukovany NPP will fulfill its key objective to the CEZ GROUP’s Effectiveness programme.
Plan for increase of Units power in 2009-2012 is as follows:
2009 – Unit 3, 2010 – Unit 4, 2011- Unit 1 and 2012 – Unit 2
Increasing power of modernised reactor Units is supported by a number of technical and safety proving testing that will continue by the middle of May when the updated Unit will be transferred from the testing mode into the commercial operation.
Units operation, as today, on 3rd April 2009, 7:00 hrs:
- Unit 1 100% 464MWe
- Unit 2 99% 459MWe, operation at end of fuel cycle
- Unit 3 17.7% 0MWe, startup after Unit modernisation
- Unit 4 100% 470MWe
Dukovany NPP has produced over 297 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity without any harmful emissions since the beginning of its operation.