The first unit of Romania’s Cernavoda nuclear plant operated by Nuclearelectrica was shut down in the morning of September 18 due to heavy water leakage from the primary cooling circuit of the reactor and will remain closed for at least two days, Economica.net reported.

The reactor is reaching the end of its lifetime and will be subject to refurbishing in the coming years. It has undergone repeated outages over the past years, but mostly related to secondary equipment such as the link to the national power grid.

Without posing security problems, the outages have significant impact on the company’s operations and the market as well.

The spot electricity price on the day-ahead market reached another all-time high for the day of September 19: the price for six one-hour segments is RON 750 (EUR 158) per MWh.

The average price for the day is EUR 122 per MWh, more than twice as much as the average price in Hungary (EUR 55 per MWh).

(Photo: Nuclearelectrica.ro)

editor@romania-insider.com