I have mentioned in numerous posts my concern about quality control in the manufacture of components for nuclear power reactors. Half of the reactor components manufactured in Japan for export are not inspected. Components bound for South Korea were found to have serial numbers stolen from existing components so they could avoid inspection. One of the selling points for the new small modular reactors is that their parts will be standardized and they will be manufactured in a factory and shipped to their operational location. However, if the factory does not have good quality control, then many small modular reactors from that factory could have reliability and safety problems.
Areva is a French company with majority ownership held by the French government. It manufactures nuclear power reactors and makes components for reactors at the Le Creusot foundry in France. That factory has been making nuclear components since 1960. For many years, it had the only forge big enough in France to make steel reactor vessels.
Areva is involved in building reactors for the Hinkley Point C nuclear power project in Britain. A pressure vessel from the Le Creusot foundry that was going to be used at Hinkley Point was found to have so much carbon in the steel that it was only half as strong as it was supposed to be and was a threat to the safety of the new Hinkley Point reactors. When inspectors began investigating Areva's Le Creusot foundry, they found altered and forged inspection reports going back decades for components manufactured there and sold to nuclear project across the world.
The revelations of bad quality control procedures at Le Creusot caused such concern that seventeen French power reactors have been shut down so that components from Le Creusot could be inspected. In September of this year, French authorities ordered Areva to check six thousand manufacturing files by hand. These files document every nuclear component made at Le Creusot since 1960.
Areva claims that Le Creusot stopped falsifying records in 2012. That year, responsibility for quality control at the foundry was taken away from an internal office there and given to an office at another Areva factory. French authorities are investigating whether or not that is true.
Last week, French prosecutors started a preliminary investigation into the problems at Le Creusot to decide whether or not activities at the foundry could be considered fraudulent and dangerous. An officer of the Nuclear Safety Authority of France said that what has been found at Le Creusot is "unacceptable."
Like dominos falling, now six other countries including the U.S. and China that received parts from Le Creusot have begun an investigation into the safety of their reactors. Representatives from these six countries are currently in France at the Le Creusot foundry to check quality control procedures and examine internal documents.
There are nine nuclear power plants in the U.S. that have big components from Le Creusot. Investigators from Finland found that a major component that was to be used in a Finnish nuclear project might be substandard. The foreign inspectors have remarked that they have no definitive proof that their countries' reactors are at risk and more research is needed.
During the investigation, a special kind of file was found at the Le Creusot foundry. Each of these special folders was marked with two dashes and were referred to as a dossier barré. These special files were not supposed to be shown to customers or regulators. They apparently contain documentation of possible problems with components that Areva wanted to keep secret. So far two hundred of these files have been found.
The Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011 resulted in a serious blow to the public acceptance of nuclear power. Now, this latest revelation that a country that is a major exporter of nuclear components has problems with quality control and fraudulent documentation of nuclear components will cause further public suspicion of the global nuclear industry.