ANNUAL OUTAGE TO BEGIN AT THE LOVIISA NUCLEAR POWER PLANT Unit 1 of Fortum's Loviisa power plant in Finland will be shut down on Saturday 9 August for annual outage. The unit is scheduled to undergo extensive annual inspection and maintenance, which is performed every four years. In terms of work schedule, the major maintenance tasks are related to the inspection of the inner parts of the reactor pressure vessel and to the reactor itself. Various other important maintenance and alteration tasks, such as the replacement of the stator of the main generator of the primary turbine, which already began on Tuesday 5 August, will also be performed at the unit. Installation tasks of the extensive and ongoing automation renewal project, which will last several years, were already started during the summer. As a part of the annual outage of Unit 1, process systems that cannot be connected to the new automation system while the plant is in production will now be connected to the system. The process of switching from an analogue automation system to a digital one has been divided into various stages, and will continue in step with the annual maintenance periods until the year 2014. The annual outage of Unit 2 will begin when Unit 1 is back in production near the end of September. Unit 2 will undergo a short annual maintenance procedure where, in addition to normal maintenance tasks and re-fuelling, the most significant tasks will be the inspection of the steam generators. The unit's large sea water pipelines will also be inspected and serviced. In addition to 460 employees of the Loviisa power plant, approximately 950 inspection and maintenance professionals from 80 companies will participate in the work. 150 of them will arrive from Germany, Hungary, Russia, Slovakia, Spain and other countries. The annual outages of both units are expected to be completed by mid-October. High quality annual maintenance operations guarantee a safe and undisturbed production for the power plant. Last year, the Loviisa power plant generated over 8 terawatt hours of power, sufficient for the annual consumption of approximately 400,000 detached houses with electric heating. The capacity factors of both units, reflecting their level of performance, were among the best in the world at 95%. Fortum Power and Heat Loviisa power plant Communications For further information, please contact: Raimo Raitanen, Head of the Technology Unit, tel. +358 10 455 3300 Mauri Lindqvist, Head of the Annual Maintenance Team, tel. +358 10 455 3460 Pertti Salonen, Head of the Maintenance Unit, tel. +358 10 455 3100
Press release
ANNUAL OUTAGE TO BEGIN AT THE LOVIISA NUCLEAR POWER PLANT
07 August 2008, 14:45 EEST
Fortum Power and Heat Press release 7 August 2008 at 14.45 EET