Routine inspections at Britain’s 500 megawatt Hunterston B nuclear reactor revealed no significant increase in cracking in parts of the graphite core, plant operator EDF Energy said.
Two out of 6,000 graphite bricks were found to be cracked during an inspection in October 2014, though this is a normal part of the ageing process for nuclear reactors, the company said.
“During this inspection we identified two additional cracked bricks as a result of keyway root cracking,” it said, adding that this was in line with expectations.
It said that inspections on other stations found similar results in October 2014.
EDF Energy’s Heysham 1 and Hartlepool nuclear power plants in Britain were offline for inspections for months in 2014 after a crack was found on a boiler spine at Heysham 1.
