After one of Eskom’s most reliable generating units (Unit 1) at Koeberg Nuclear Power Station went offline for longer than expected, the only other functional unit (Unit 2) tripped early on Saturday morning.
However, Eskom returned Koeberg Unit 2 to full operation on Sunday evening.
The problem forced Eskom to ramp up load shedding to stage 6 (as of Tuesday 18 April) as three other units at the Kusile Power Station also suffered outages.
After the announcement of stage 6 load shedding, Eskom said in a statement that they would like to assure all South Africans that their staff at the various power stations are working around the clock to bring units back online and at higher efficiencies as soon as possible.
The utility said the outage was due to problems with its feedwater pumps, without providing any further details on the precise nature of the “problems”.
“The reactor has been taken critical and reactor power is being increased to enable turbine commissioning,” said Eskom. The unit is expected to safely synchronise to the grid before morning peak tomorrow (Monday 17 April), once all the required activities are completed.”
Lifespan
TygerBurger previously reported on the lifespan of the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station which licence expires in 2024. Eskom is in process of extending its lifespan by replacing key areas of the plant such as the steam generators.
The project, which will extend the lifespan of the plant by another 20 years, is running behind schedule, making it inevitable that South Africans will spend the entire winter without one unit, which has a capacity of 920MW.
This means that Eskom’s system will be under more pressure during winter than expected. One unit of Koeberg is equal to one stage of load shedding.
Unit 1 is currently on a long-term outage for maintenance and refuelling, as well as the replacement of the steam generators.
