On Thursday 12 June 2025, the Central Emergency Relief (Central des Secours d’Urgence - CSU) 112 announced that EDF, the operator of the Cattenom nuclear power plant across the border in France, had reported an issue with the ventilation system in the plant’s fuel building.
According to information communicated by CSU, on Tuesday 3 June 2025 at 17:25, operators in the control room of the Cattenom nuclear power plant detected a fault in a valve located in the fuel building's ventilation system and organised the necessary work to restore it to compliance. On Wednesday 4 June 2025 at approximately 08:00, analyses by EDF revealed that the valve was stuck in an open position, resulting in the ventilation system being unavailable in the event of an accident.
EDF said: “Our operating rules require that the ventilation system be fully operational for fuel handling operations. In the event of unavailability, handling operations must be suspended within one hour. However, during this period, handling operations were carried out for periods of one and a half hours and four hours respectively.”
The plant operator added: “This event had no real impact on the safety of the facilities and, in the event of an accident, the activity monitoring systems within the fuel building would have detected any anomalies. Due to non-compliance with an operating rule and the associated late detection, the Cattenom power plant management declared a significant safety event at level one (of seven) on the INES scale on Monday 10 June 2025, to the Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection Authority.”
