Siting of Dukovany II

Obtaining a License for the siting of a nuclear installation is the first important step in the process of designing a new nuclear installation from the perspective of Act No. 263/2016 Coll., the Atomic Act. The applicant in the matter of the application for a license for the siting of the new Nuclear Power Plant at Dukovany Site is the company Elektrarna Dukovany II, a. s.

The subject of the application for the License for the new Nuclear Power Plant at Dukovany Site is the siting of two nuclear installations, each with one pressurized water reactor with a rated thermal capacity of up to 3500 MW_t, with an appropriate net electrical power output of up to 1200 MW_e.  The decision whether the construction of 1 or 2 nuclear installations will be the subject of further stages in the preparation of the new Nuclear Power Plant at Dukovany Site.

Work on the documentation for the application for a siting licence began around 2015, i.e. in the year, when the activities on the documentation for environmental impact assessment of the new Nuclear Power Plant at Dukovany Site were gradually terminated. The areas of geotechnics, hydrogeology, tectonics, seismicity, biology, meteorology, hydrology and many other areas that may affect the nuclear safety were investigated.

In accordance with the Atomic Act, following documents were submitted to the State Office of Nuclear Safety:

• Initial Safety Analysis Report (ISAR) for the new Nuclear Power Plant at Dukovany Site;
• Analysis of physical protection assurance needs and possibilities;
• Management system programme;
• Intention to ensure the monitoring of discharges from the nuclear installation;
• Monitoring programme;
• Intention to ensure radiation extraordinary event management;
• Draft concept for the safe decommissioning;
• Description of the method of quality assurance for the preparation of construction project implementation;
• Principles of quality assurance for the subsequent phases of the nuclear installation’s life cycle.

More than 30 experts from the company Elektrarna Dukovany II, a. s. participated in the preparation of the siting license documentation of the new Nuclear Power Plant at Dukovany Site and several dozen employees of CEZ, a. s. provided their expert advice. The documentation contains almost 1,600 pages of text and more than 200 expert studies were cited. The most important suppliers involved in the preparation of documentation were:

• ÚJV Řež, a. s.;
• Výzkumný ústav vodohospodářský T. G. Masaryka, v. v. i.;
• AMEC Foster Wheeler s.r.o.;
• Energoprůzkum Praha, spol. s r. o.;
• Ústav fyziky Země, Masarykova univerzita v Brně, Přírodovědecká fakulta;
• Ústav struktury a mechaniky hornin AV ČR, v. v. i.;
• Česká geologická služba;
• and others.

At the same time, great emphasis was placed on international cooperation and feedback from foreign experts. An example of specific cooperation is the SIGMA-2 project, in which Elektrarna Dukovany II, a. s. experts, CEZ, a. s. experts, together with experts from supplier institutions, participate in activities leading to the specification of a seismic hazard in Europe. This participation brought significant development of seismic hazard description at Dukovany Site and whole Middle European region.

In the area for siting, the scope of field survey work was as follows:

• Hydrogeology of the area for siting: 30 hydrogeological monitoring wells, of which 17 in the immediate vicinity of the land (deepest 150 m) in a total length of 1.7 km, drilling cores archived in 234 crates.
• Engineering geology of the construction site: 173 engineering-geological wells in a total length of 4.4 km, drilling cores archived in 888 crates.
• Tectonics of the immediate vicinity of the Dukovany NPP: 28 geophysical measurements in a total length of approximately 11 km; 41 engineering-geological wells in a total length of 700 m, drilling cores archived in 131 crates; 12 geological trenches with a total excavation length of 500 m.
• Tectonics of the Diensdorf fracture system: 25 geophysical measurements in a total length of 8 km; 25 engineering-geological wells in a total length of 350 m, drilling cores archived in 56 crates; 8 geological trenches with a total excavation length of 0.35 km.

Thus, a total of 30 monitoring wells, 239 engineering-geological wells, 53 geophysical measurements were performed, and 20 geological trenches were exposed. The drilling cores are stored in 1309 crates.

Data from these field surveys and data provided by many public institutions in the Czech Republic (such as meteorological data) served as a basis for preparing the Initial Safety Analysis Report (ISAR) for the new Nuclear Power Plant at Dukovany Site. ISAR is divided into three parts and consists of approximately 1600 pages of text, 17 drawings and 3 annexes. The characteristics of the area are summarized in the second part of ISAR, which summarizes data from site surveys, and which analyses external and internal events (phenomena) that may lead to threats to systems, structures and components with an impact on nuclear safety.

Other documents (for example, Intention to ensure radiation extraordinary event management or Monitoring programme, etc.) that are part of the application range from several pages to tens of pages of text and are accompanied by several annexes. These documents most often contain proposals for solutions for future stages of the life cycle of the new Nuclear Power Plant.

The documentation for the application for the Licence for the siting of the new Nuclear Power Plant at Dukovany Site was submitted to the State Office for Nuclear Safety on 25 March 2020. The application fee of CZK 39.2 million was paid.

The administrative procedure for a license for the siting of a nuclear installation has a set period of 12 months, which runs from the date of submission of the application. However, the administrative procedure lasted less than 12 months, during which a total of 5 requests to correct deficiencies were sent from the State Office for Nuclear Safety to the company Elektrarna Dukovany II, a. s. The identified deficiencies formulated in all five requests received were promptly eliminated.

The company Elektrarna Dukovany II, a. s. obtained the License for the siting of two units of the new Nuclear Power Plant at Dukovany Site from the State Office for Nuclear Safety on 8 March 2021.