Following the publication of an article on Wednesday 13 April 2022 on the montelnews.com site bearing the title "Corrosion cracks on an eighth EDF reactor" (Des fissures de corrosion sur un 8e réacteur d’EDF), Luxembourg's Minister for the Environment, Climate and Sustainable Development, Carole Dieschbourg, and Minister for Energy, Claude Turmes, have sent a joint letter to the Director General of the Nuclear Safety Authority, Olivier Gupta, on Thursday 14 April 2022.

According to the source of montelnews article, cracks in the welds of the safety injection circuit (RIS) were detected on the Cattenom reactor number 3 which has been forced to shutdown since 26 March 2022.

Ministers Dieschbourg and Turmes has asked for all the details and the results of the analyses carried out by EDF as soon as possible.

In order to be able to identify the impact of these anomalies, the ministers would like to know whether it is a material defect or a design defect and what the resulting consequences are for the other reactors on the Cattenom site.

Given the consequences for the local population, Ministers Dieschbourg and Turmes insisted on an urgent meeting of the Local Information Commission (la Commission locale d'information - CLI) of Cattenom in order to inform the members of the CLI on the details of the problem and the measures that the operator intends to take.

Response from Greenpeace regarding stress corrosion cracks detected at Cattenom

Greenpeace Luxembourg has asked the Luxembourg and German governments, whose border is a few kilometers from the Cattenom power plant, to intervene urgently with the French authorities concerning these cracks due to stress corrosion cracking (corrosion sous contrainte - CSC) and to request all the details on the analyses of the EDF. Greenpeace also called for an urgent meeting of the CLI to inform CLI members of the details of the problem and the measures EDF will take.