26 Jan (NucNet): Framatome has received the green light from the French nuclear regulator ASN and state-controlled nuclear operator EDF to resume the manufacture of forgings for the French nuclear fleet at its Le Creusot site.
Framatome, the nuclear reactor manufacturing unit that EDF bought from fellow state-owned Areva, said the decision means it can continue ramping up its production with a target of 80 ingots per year.
Framatome said the authorisation is the result of the improvement plan implemented from the beginning of 2016 following a series of quality audits at Le Creusot, in central-eastern France.
“With the completion of all the actions necessary for the resumption of production for the French nuclear fleet and overall progress of 90% to date, the plan will be fully closed out in the first half of 2018,” Framatome said in a statement on 25 January 2018.
Framatome said it had invested €7.5m ($9.3m) at Le Creusot in 2017 to make the facility a “centre of excellence” for the manufacture of forgings for the nuclear industry.
In April 2015, following the discovery of what Framatome called “methodological discrepancies” in the performance of tensile tests carried out during the manufacturing process, Areva began a quality audit at the site.
ASN said “major technical and organisational dysfunctions” had come to light in 2015 and 2016. The quality audit showed about 400 irregularities in 9,000 fabrication files for both nuclear and non-nuclear components. About half of the first 400 irregularities examined involved nuclear components.
An audit is continuing of all records relating to forgings produced for the nuclear industry. Framatome said the analysis of these findings will continue until the end of 2018.
At two other facilities, Jeumont and Saint-Marcel, audits were completed last year and showed no deviations.
Le Creusot is one of only a few facilities capable of producing the large forged parts required for nuclear power plants. Since the beginning of civil nuclear programmes in the 1970s, the facility has supplied some 3,000 forgings and castings for the reactor coolant systems of nuclear facilities around the world.
