History
Construction of the plant began in 1976, and Unit 1 was synchronised to the grid on 4 April 1984. Unit 2 followed on 25 July 1985.
On 8 January 1982, the 70th anniversary of the formation of the African National Congress, Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC attacked Koeberg nuclear power plant while it was still under construction. Damage was estimated at R 500 million and the commissioning of the plant was put back by 18 months. In 2010, the bomber was identified as being Rodney Wilkinson.
In August 2002 twelve Greenpeace activists obtained access to the station. Six of them scaled the wall of the plant to hang up an anti-nuclear protest banner. The twelve were arrested and fined.
At the end of 2005, Koeberg started experiencing numerous technical difficulties. On 11 November 2005, a fault on a transmission busbar caused the reactor to go into safe mode, cutting supply to most of the Western Cape for about two hours. On 16 November a fire under a 400kV transmission line caused the line to trip, causing severe voltage dips which resulted in Koeberg once again shutting down. Various parts of the Cape were left without electricity for hours at a time. On the evening of 23 November, a routine inspection of the backup safety system revealed a below-spec concentration of an important chemical, resulting in a controlled shutdown of the reactor. Due to the sufficiency of backup supply, major power cuts were not experienced until Friday 25 November, when the backup capacity began running out. At this point, rotational load shedding was employed, with customers being switched off in stages for most of the day. Koeberg was re-synchronised to the national grid on Saturday 26 November.
On Sunday 25 December 2005, the generator of Unit 1 was damaged. While the generator was being powered up after scheduled refuelling and maintenance, a loose bolt, which was left inside the generator caused severe damage, forcing it to be shut down. Subsequent to the unexpected unavailability of Unit 1, Unit 2 was also brought down for scheduled refuelling, resulting in a severe shortage of supply to the Western Cape. This resulted in widespread load shedding in order to maintain the stability of the network. A replacement rotor for Unit 1 was shipped in from France and the unit was brought back into operation in May 2006.
On 18 and 19 February 2006 large parts of the Western Cape again experienced blackouts due to a controlled shutdown of Koeberg. According to Eskom and the City of Cape Town, power cuts were to continue until 26 February 2006, however power supply problems continued beyond this date.
The estimated economic losses due to the power cuts was over R 500 M as at February 2007, and was estimated to rise to possibly as high as R 2 billion.
On 12 September 2010, 91 members of staff were contaminated with Cobalt-58 dust in an incident that appears confined to the plant.
Read more about this topic: Koeberg Nuclear Power Station
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