One of my major concerns with the increasing manufacture of nuclear power reactors in the world today is the possible failure of manufacturing facilities to maintain high quality control for the components they are making. Japan is a major exporter of nuclear technology and only about half of the products are being inspected by regulatory agencies. South Korea had a scandal where certification documentation was being forged for nuclear components. Now a major supplier of nuclear components in France has being audited for problems with the quality of their products.
AREVA is a French utility company with a majority of shares held by the French government. AREVA manages the fifty eight nuclear power reactors that supply about seventy percent of the electricity consumed in France. AREVA purchases reactors from EDF, another French company which is majority owned by the French government. The steel reactor containment vessels used by EDF for the new European Pressurized Reactor, are made by Le Creusot, a French company which was purchased by AREVA in 2006. An EPR reactor is currently under construction at Flamanville.
Last year it was discovered that the amount of carbon in the containment vessel used for the Flamanville power reactor was too high and the vessel was weaker than it was supposed to be. A reactor vessel intended for use on a project in the United Kingdom was diverted and the steel tested. It also was too weak because of too much carbon in the steel alloy.
AREVA announced a year ago that it would conduct an audit into the quality of forged components from the Le Creusot manufacturing facility. In October of 2015, AREVA submitted its audit results to the French nuclear regulatory agency, ASN. The ASN responded that they "considered that this relatively superficial review - which only went back as far as 2010 - was insufficient and did not give a complete picture of the organization and practices at Creusot Forge, the quality of the parts produced and the safety culture prevailing within the plant". The ASN insisted that AREVA extend their audit of Le Creusot back to 2004 when the first parts for the new EPR reactor design were manufactured.
At the end of April, AREVA provided their extended audit to ASN. They found evidence of the manufacturing checks on four hundred components forged at Le Creusot since 1965 contained irregularities. The ASN said that "these irregularities comprise inconsistencies, modifications or omissions in the production files, concerning manufacturing parameters and test results." In some cases, when the tests showed that components were near a limit of acceptability, the testers would rewrite the notes for their test findings to show that the parts were closer to the middle of the accepted range of values.
The ASN demanded that AREVA provide a list of the parts concerned as soon as possible, "along with its assessment of the consequences for the safety of the facilities, jointly with the licensees concerned". And, the ASN said that "the review process will need to be seen through to completion in order to assess all the anomalies which may have affected past manufacturing operations and draw any relevant conclusions regarding the safety of the facilities."
The AREVA audit of Le Creusot reveals not only incompetence but also outright fraud in the testing of nuclear components extending over a period of fifty years. How many other reactors around the world contain substandard parts? It is unlikely that we will ever know unless those parts fail and cause serious accidents which is a very real possibility.
Le Creusot forge:
