Strasbourg (AFP)
The restart of the second Fessenheim reactor, stopped Friday morning after lightning struck a transformer, four days before the final shutdown of the Alsatian plant, was postponed by "a few hours" on Saturday, it was said. learned from EDF.
"The restart operation (of reactor n ° 2) is in progress" and the "connection to the network" is scheduled for Saturday "at 5 pm", against 11:30 am initially, said an EDF spokesperson, insisting on the fact that this setback was "nothing major".
"this is the usual procedure", "maintenance operations" may "take a little longer" than expected, he added, adding that "the reconnection (of the reactor) to the network will take place in the day "of Saturday.
"There is nothing significant, the unit will be restarted when the network", which has not been impacted, "will need it the most," added the spokesman.
According to him, the automatic shutdown of the reactor occurred Friday morning after lightning "fell on a transformer", when thunderstorms were passing over the commune of Haut-Rhin.
"When we have an automatic shutdown, we start the diagnosis and we restart as soon as we can," we said on Friday at the plant, while the second and last reactor in operation of the dean of French nuclear power plants must be disconnected from the network at night from Monday to Tuesday.
Reactor 1 was finally shut down on February 22.
Anti-nuclear activists, long-time committed to the closure of this plant, which has become a political issue, immediately commented on the shutdown.
"Who will still dare to pretend that it is safe? Besides, is it reasonable to restart it?" wondered about his Twitter account André Hatz, the president of the Stop Fessenheim association, mocking a "bedridden" power plant.
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