Eskom said that on 19 September 2016, Unit 1 of the Koeberg nuclear station will be taken offline for a planned refueling outage after a safe record-setting continuous run of 474 days.
The refuelling outage takes just over a month and the unit is expected back online towards the end of October 2016. Koeberg Unit 1 has been on stream without any interruption since its statutory three-month refuelling outage in February 2015.
Koeberg Unit 2 is currently operating optimally and is contributing 930MW to the national grid.
Every 15 to 18 months, each of the two units at Koeberg is shut down for refuelling, inspection and maintenance. This routine maintenance is part of Eskom’s overall maintenance programme for its fleet of generation units. Outages are scheduled so as to avoid having both units out of service at the same time and to avoid the winter months in each year.
During these routine outages, one third of the used nuclear fuel is replaced with new fuel. Maintenance, plant modifications, inspections and statutory work to ensure that international safety standards continue to be met and that reliable plant performance continues, are performed.