E.ON's Brokdorf reactor may stay closed for weeks

Monday, August 22, 2011

Northern German nuclear reactor Brokdorf may stay closed for several weeks after it was taken offline on Sunday, a spokeswoman for operator E.ON said on Tuesday.

E.ON hoped to know by the end of this week what the future schedule for the plant would be, the spokeswoman said, adding that E.ON assumed that a transformer at the plant needed to be swapped out.

Wholesale power markets had expected the 1,480 MW plant to rejoin the grid initially on Aug. 9.

German power capacity has been tightened as nuclear operators were forced by the Berlin government to leave offline permanently eight suspended reactors or 41 percent of the previous total in the wake of the Fukushima plant disaster in Japan.

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