Loviisa Nuclear Power Plant returns to operations

Fortum Corp. recently announced that both nuclear power plant units at the Loviisa facility in Finland are back online following their annual maintenance outages.

Both units had one-fourth of their total fuel replaced. Loviisa Unit 2 saw a significant amount of maintenance work above normal fuel replacement and maintenance procedures. This included steam line turbines having their activity measured and the replacing of a diesel generator.

The company states that Loviisa Unit 1's outage exceeded the schedule by three days to address a hydrogen generator leak and to replace turbine reheaters.

"The annual outages as a whole were carried out safely, according to plan and schedule and no major incidents endangering personnel or plant safety occured," Timo Eurasto, manager of operations unit at the Loviisa power plant, said.

The company also announced that long-term developments to lessen radiation levels on personnel during the outage had provided good results. They state that outage radiation levels during the outage were lower than they had ever been at the facility.
  
Unit 1 stayed offline for 21 days and Unit 2 went offline for 16 days during the outage process. During the maintenance operations 750 external contractors were brought in alongside the 500 employees working at the Loviisa power plant.