News24.com | No power coming from Koeberg nuclear station after only functional unit trips

Koeberg power station: Picture: Gallo Images

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The only functional unit at the Koeberg nuclear power station, Unit 2, tripped in the early hours of Saturday morning. 

Koeberg stakeholder manager Lewis Phidza and Eskom spokesperson Daphne Mokwena confirmed the incident to News24. 

Mokwena said the unit was still out by early Saturday afternoon as the team is "still busy with the diagnosis".

Unit 1 is currently on a long-term outage for maintenance and refuelling, as well as the replacement of the steam generators and is expected to return to service on 6 August, much later than originally scheduled. 

Each unit is expected to generate around 920MW of power, which means that currently over 1800MW, nearly two stages of load shedding, are not being fed into the grid. 

However Mokwena said the Unit 2 trip did not cause an increase in load shedding as two units at other stations had come back online overnight. 

Energy analyst and MD at EE Business Intelligence also tweeted that he had been informed about the incident at Koeberg.

This trip comes as SA is dealing with near week-long Stage 6 load shedding, amid numerous plant issues. While load shedding dropped to marginally lower stages over the weekend, Stage 6 is expected again on Monday. 

News24 reported previously that the project to extend the lifespan of Koeberg by another 20 years is running 45 days behind schedule, making it inevitable that SA will spend the entire winter without one unit, which has a capacity of 920MW.

The planned outage for Unit 2 is expected to start in November. 

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