South Korea’s nuclear regulator is expanding its special investigation into the manual shutdown of the Hanbit-1 power reactor earlier this month because of concerns it may have been the result of a violation of safety protocol. The Nuclear Safety and Security Commission said in a statement that during an inspection into the manual shutdown of the 995-MW pressurised water rector unit on 10 May it had found “some proof” that Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Company (KHNP) “did not apply an adequate level of safety measures and violated the Nuclear Safety Act”. The commission said it had ordered the suspension of operations at the plant and sent a team of special judiciary police officers to carry out a special inspection. On 10 May, KHNP carried out a diagnostic test on the effectiveness of control rods, during which the reactor’s power output surged 18% exceeding the 5% upper limit range. Instead of shutting down the reactor immediately, it was almost 12 hours before the unit was taken offline, the commission said. Initial investigations showed that a member of staff who was not licensed to handle the control rods had been directly involved in the process.
Nucnet 27th May 2019 read more »