Borssele nuclear power plant
| Borssele Nuclear Power Station | |
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Borssele NPP in 2011
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 Location of Borssele Nuclear Power Station in Netherlands
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| Official name | Kernenergiecentrale Borssele |
| Country | Netherlands |
| Location | Borssele |
| Coordinates | 51°25′51″N 3°43′06″E / 51.43083°N 3.71833°ECoordinates: 51°25′51″N 3°43′06″E / 51.43083°N 3.71833°E |
| Status | Operational |
| Construction began | 1969 |
| Commission date | 26 October 1973 |
| Owner(s) | EPZ |
| Operator(s) | Elektriciteits Produktiemaatschappij Zuid-Nederland |
| Nuclear power station | |
| Reactor type | PWR |
| Reactor supplier | Siemens KWU |
| Power generation | |
| Units operational | 1 x 515 MW |
| Nameplate capacity | 515 MW |
| Annual output | 3,273 GWh |
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Website www |
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The Borssele Nuclear Power Station (Kernenergiecentrale Borssele) is a nuclear power plant near the Dutch town of Borssele. It has a pressurised water reactor (PWR). Borssele is the only nuclear power plant still operational for electricity production in the Netherlands. Its net output is 485 MWe.
The Borssele nuclear power plant was built by Siemens and has been operational since 1973. Originally it was built primarily to supply relatively cheap electricity to an aluminum smelting facility, opened by French concern Pechiney at a nearby site in 1971, that for many years used two-thirds of the output of the power plant. In 2006, the installation of a modern steam turbine brought the original electrical output of 449 MW up to 485 MW.
In July 2011, Borssele received from the government the permission to burn MOX fuel. Currently, the uranium used by Borssele comes from Kazakhstan.
Areva NCreprocesses the spent fissionable material. Part of the deal is that the radioactive waste (i.e. the products of the reprocessing which are not useful) are taken back by the Netherlands.
The Central Organization for Radioactive Waste (COVRA), also in Borssele, is the national storage facility for all radioactive wastes. It is a surface facility suitable for the next 100 years.
Borssele produces around 12 tonnes of high level waste annually.
The nuclear plant had a long lasting contract with the nuclear recycling-factory in La Hague. This contract will end in 2015. Since 2006 it was impossible to transport the used fuel-rod to France, because the French laws on nuclear fuel were changed. The new law insisted that the nuclear waste should return to The Netherlands within a short period. This required a change in Dutch law too, but it took 5 years before all new permissions for transports were handled by the "Raad van State", and all questions of civilians and all opposition against the transports were handled properly. All that time it was impossible to send spent fuel to France, and the used fuel rods were piling up in the spent fuel pool. Between 2012 and 2015 ten transports were planned, in which each time 50 percent more fuel rods than usual would be taken by train to La Hague. The reprocessed uranium would be enriched in Russia, by mixing it with high enriched uranium from nuclear-powered submarines, discarded after the cold-war. A quarter of the uranium would stay in Russia, to be used in nuclear power stations there. The first transport was at 7 June 2011. Although activists tried to delay the transport, the next day the fuel rods arrived in La Hague.
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Wikipedia