FORTUM CORPORATION PRESS RELEASE 16.8.2019
The annual outage of Fortum’s Loviisa nuclear power plant will begin with Unit 2 on Sunday, August 18th, followed by the servicing of Unit 1. This year, both units will undergo a refuelling outage. The annual outages are estimated to last a total of about 35 days.
In addition to the normal periodic maintenance work and refuelling, tasks related to maintenance and continuous improvement, such as modification of the primary water purification system’s filtering, will be carried out on both units during the annual outage. This will result in more effective filtering of impurities in the primary circuit in the future and a reduction in the radiation doses during the annual outages. Additionally, the digitalisation at the power plant moves forward, as process system monitoring will be enhanced by deploying an internal fibre optic connection which will enable faster and more efficient data transmission in the future. Every year, one quarter of the fuel is replaced.
In July, two consecutive leaks were noticed during a test in the power plant's emergency diesel generator cooling piping, which had been renewed in the previous year in unit 2, as part of the power plant's ageing management. Inspections and necessary repairs in the unit 2 emergency diesel generator cooling piping will be carried out during annual outages.
“The Loviisa power plant’s reactors are shut down once a year for the annual outage. Even though this year there are no implementations of big investment projects, the annual outages involve the implementation of a total of over 5,000 maintenance and development tasks. Each of them must be carried out with the utmost care and precision,” says Loviisa power plant’s Deputy Director Thomas Buddas.
“At the Loviisa power plant we understand our responsibility for performing the work with expertise and safely by adhering to best practices that guide both our own employees as well as our external employees to deliver high quality results, both in annual outages and on a daily basis,” he continues.
In addition to the power plant’s 500 employees, nearly 800 external workers will participate in the annual outage. Some 90 per cent of the workers are Finns. Additionally, there will be workers from France, Poland, Germany, Russia and Czech Republic.
Fortum Corporation
Group Communications
Further information:
Thomas Buddas, Deputy Director, Loviisa power plant, tel. +358 10 455 3710
Loviisa power plant
In 2018, the load factor at Fortum’s fully-owned Loviisa nuclear power plant was 88.4%. On an international scale, the load factor was among the best in the world for pressurised water reactor power plants. The plant produced a total of 7.79 terawatt hours (net), which is more than 11% of Finland’s total electricity production. The Loviisa power plant employs more than 500 Fortum employees and nearly 100 permanent employees of other companies working in the plant area every day. In 2018, Fortum invested about EUR 100 million in the Loviisa nuclear power plant. www.fortum.com/loviisa