Nuclear reactor of Romanian power plant stopped

One of the two nuclear power units of Cernavoda nuclear power plant in Romania was automatically disabled by emergency system, news portal RL said.

The incident occurred on Wednesday night. The cause of the shutdown has not been unveiled yet. According to Dumitru Dean, the general director of Nuclearelectrica - the company that operates the plant, nothing serious has happened at the station. Meanwhile, the shutdown of one of the reactors led to the reduction in the production of electricity.

According to the preliminary version, the automatic system was activated following the failure of the cooling system of the generator. Currently, the reactor operates in a safe mode. Nuclearelectrica representatives assured that there was no threat to public safety and the environment. The reactor will be reconnected to the national electric network only after the cause of failure is identified.

According to Romanian media, this is not the first unplanned shutdown of the reactor at Cernavoda. The last time, a similar incident occurred in November. In addition, specialists had to disconnect one of the power units in December 2012 due to failure of power lines after a storm.

NPP Cernavoda is the only nuclear power plant in Romania. It consists of two units with Canadian-made CANDU heavy water reactors with the capacity of 700 MW each. The nuclear power plant produces about 18 percent of electricity consumed in Romania.