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Unit 3 of Zaporizhia NPP to be re-launched late on Friday — energy minister

hort circuit occurred at the plant’s voltage transformer yard on November 28, 2014, causing Unit 3 to automatically shut down

Archive ITAR-TASS

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KIEV, December 5 /TASS/. Unit 3 of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant will be re-launched at 10:00pm local time on Friday, Volodymyr Demchishin, Ukraine’s newly-elected Minister of Energy and Coal Mining Industry, said on Friday. “The power unit will begin operation at 10:00pm after repairs. The problem has been solved,” Demchishin said.

Short circuit occurred at the plant’s voltage transformer yard on November 28, 2014, causing Unit 3 to automatically shut down. “Ukraine’s State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate said that no radioactive materials had been released because of the shutdown. It preliminarily estimated the event to be a level 0-rated event on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale. The scale ranges from 0 to 7, with level 0 used for situations that have no safety significance,” the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in its statement on December 3.

The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant is the biggest energy facility in Ukraine and Europe with a capacity of 6,000 MW. It has six 1 million kW nuclear power units launched successively in 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1989 and 1995.

The share of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine’s power sector has increased from 2% to 22% since 1984.

Ukraine’s nuclear power stations have a total of 15 power units, of which only 12 are operating. The repairs of the 1st power unit of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant is to be over by December 30; the 1st power unit of the Khmelnitskaya nuclear power plant will finish on December 15.

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