PARIS. The larger-than-expected crack discovered in France on a weld of an emergency circuit in an extinct nuclear reactor of Edf, Penly 1, in the Seine-Maritime, represents a “serious” and “problematic issue”: this is what the president declared today of the Nuclear Safety Authority (Asn) of Paris, Bernard Doroszczuk, during a hearing in the Senate. «There is a new element in recent weeks which is the discovery of a corrosion crack (…) on one of the circuits of the Penly 1 reactor, which has a very important dimension, given that it is 23 mm by one total thickness of 27», he declared, evoking a “serious issue” that Edf is called upon to resolve. «It’s not about micro-cracks. When there are just 4mm left on a thickness of 27, that’s a problem,” he warned.
The crack represents a new blow for Edf, the French energy giant whose nuclear park has been heavily affected since 2021 by similar phenomena. In a note, the transalpine group indicated that it had detected a “significant corrosion defect” on an emergency pipe used to cool the reactor in an emergency.