Energy security

24/7 power? Nearly half Germany nuclear plant off-line due to faults, faked testing

According to a report in IWR Online (in German), more than four gigawatts of nuclear capacity has been off for most of this month:

• Phillippsburg 2 was shut down on 8 April after it was revealed that the operator had reported, but not conducted, security checks. (Checks were also faked from Q4 2014 until March 2015 in Biblis, but it is in the cool-down phase after being shut down in 2011.)
• Gundremmingen B was shut down on 7 April for its final revisions before it is phased out (in 2017).
• Grohnde was shut down on 2 April when leaks in the volume control system were detected. A pump was found to be defective, and Eon says it will need a few more weeks to remedy the problem.

Ironically, two weeks before Grohnde broke, Forbes wrote a glowing article about the reactor, explaining that it had become the “single most productive power plant in history.” Furthermore, the reactor had begun flexibly following loads, “ramping 40 MW up or down per minute, something no one thought traditional power plants could ever do.”