Nuclear power plant located In Cattenom commune, France From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Cattenom Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear power plant located in Grand Est in the Cattenom commune, France, on the Moselle River between Thionville (7 km upstream) and Trier (48 km downstream). It is close to the city of Luxembourg (22 km) and Metz (32 km). It is the twelfth largest nuclear power station in the world.
| Cattenom Nuclear Power Plant | |
|---|---|
 Cattenom Nuclear Power Plant | |
 | |
| Official name | Centrale nucléaire de Cattenom |
| Country | France |
| Location | Cattenom, Moselle, Grand Est |
| Coordinates | 49°24′57″N 6°13′5″E |
| Status | Operational |
| Construction began | Unit 1: 29 October 1979 Unit 2: 28 July 1980 Unit 3: 15 June 1982 Unit 4: 28 September 1983 |
| Commission date | Unit 1: 1 April 1987 Unit 2: 1 February 1988 Unit 3: 1 February 1991 Unit 4: 1 January 1992 |
| Owner | EDF |
| Operator | EDF |
| Nuclear power station | |
| Reactors | 4 |
| Reactor type | PWR |
| Reactor supplier | Framatome |
| Cooling towers | 4 × Natural Draft |
| Cooling source | Moselle River, Lac du Mirgenbach |
| Thermal capacity | 4 × 3817 MWth |
| Power generation | |
| Units operational | 4 × 1300 MW |
| Make and model | P'4 REP 1300 |
| Nameplate capacity | 5200 MW |
| Capacity factor | 80.65% (2017) 73.78% (lifetime) |
| Annual net output | 36,739 GWh (2017) |
| External links | |
| Website | Centrale nucléaire de Cattenom |
| Commons | Related media on Commons |
The site consists of 4 pressurized water reactors that were all built between 1979 and 1991 and have an electric output of 1300 MW each. The plant is a relatively modern and large nuclear power plant. In 2006 it produced the third most electricity (34 TWh) of the nuclear plants in France behind Gravelines (38.5 TWh) and Paluel (34.9 TWh).
The plant employs about 1200 regular employees and about 1000 more during outage times.
The station received its ISO 14001 certification in 2005, and gained its ISO 9001 and OHSAS 18001 in 2007.
The site uses 4 separate cooling towers which use 890,000,000 m3 (3.1×1010 cu ft) of water from the Moselle annually.[1] Additionally, a water reserve on site, Lake Mirgenbach, was created. The creation of this lake has led to the flooding of the subterranean portions of Ouvrage Kobenbusch, part of the Maginot Line. In 1985 an artificial lake was also created in the Pierre-Percée valley in the Vosges.
During the 2003 European heat wave the plant was permitted to pipe the waste heat water used for cooling directly into the Moselle river. The heating of the water in these cases is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius by prefectoral decree. Heating to 2.2 degrees was accidentally caused once.
This list is not meant to be complete. The references include the official ASN list,[10] which names 81 events between March 2000 and March 2008 (of which 7 are INES level 0, 57 are INES level 1 and 2 are INES level 2).
The Ministry for Ecology has declared the area around Cattenom to run a very low risk of earthquakes.[citation needed]
The Moselle prefect declared in late 2018, the area around Cattenom to have a very low risk of earthquakes.[11]
The station is mentioned in Shadowrun, a fictional video game in which the facility undergoes a catastrophic nuclear meltdown, resulting in the release of a massive cloud of radioactive gas. In this imaginary adventure, the northern half of the province of Lorraine, the German state of Saarland and the entire nation of Luxembourg are evacuated, resulting in the creation of an exclusion zone known as the Saar-Lorraine-Luxembourg Special Administrative Zone, or S.O.X. The video game presents the S.O.X. as under direct control of mega-corporations and serving as a testing ground for the effects of radiation on the setting's magic.
