EDF wants to control 90% of welds in its most at-risk plants by the end of 2023

The EDF group presented, Thursday, March 16, its battle plan to control the pipes deemed most at risk of a new type of cracks in its nuclear power plants, after the recent discovery of very deep corrosion in the piping of a Seine-Maritime reactor.

EDF has identified 320 welds deemed to be at risk of cracking in its nuclear power plants. The group wishes to control 90% of the welds “priorities” among these by the end of the year, according to its strategy communicated to the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN). But this file “does not require modification of the scheduling of reactor outages, whether for 2023 or 2024”wanted to reassure Régis Clément, deputy director of the EDF nuclear fleet.

“ASN takes note of this change in strategy and considers that it is EDF’s responsibility to implement it”reacted the nuclear policeman in a press release on Thursday.

It is the same phenomenon of “stress corrosion”, identified since October 2021 on several sites, but which has so far generated smaller cracks and on other areas of these pipes. This time, the crack at the Penly power station, in Seine-Maritime, was of unprecedented depth and was on a pipe that had been the subject of special repairs when the power station was built in the 1980s. .