Maintenance works suspend production at OL nuke power plant

The annual outages started in Olkiluoto on Sunday when the Olkiluoto 1 plant unit (OL1) will be disconnected from electricity production for a refuelling outage, said the owner of the plant Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) in a press release.

The maintenance works will take about one week.

Meanwhile, the maintenance outage to be carried out at Olkiluoto 2 (OL2) on May 1 and the duration of the outage will be 16 days.

The outages are conducted at the OL1 and OL2 plant units in alternate years.

The planned duration of the refuelling outage at OL1 is eight days. In addition to refuelling, various yearly repeated preventive maintenance activities, inspections, fault repairs and tests are to be executed at OL1. Electricity production is scheduled to restart at OL1 on April 24.

For OL2, major activities during the maintenance outage include, e.g., the upgrading of the turbine automation system as well as the replacement of the electrical feedthrough modules in the containment.

Refuelling is also always included in the maintenance outage, and thus carried out every year at both plant units. The annual outage at OL2 is scheduled to be completed on May 17.

In addition to TVO's own personnel, the annual outages will this year be carried out by some 1,200 employees of subcontractors. About 200 experts in special fields from abroad take part in the outages.

The OL1 and OL2 plant units play an important part in base load production and implementation of the national energy and climate strategy in Finland.

The plant units have been producing electricity for more than 40 years. Presently, the electricity produced at the plant units accounts for about 16 percent of the Finnish electricity consumption and about 22 percent of the electricity produced in Finland.