Gravelines Nuclear Power Station

The Gravelines Nuclear Power Station is a nuclear power plant located in the commune of Gravelines in Nord, France, approximately from Dunkerque and Calais. Its cooling water comes from the North Sea. The plant consists of 6 nuclear reactors with a nameplate capacity of 900 MW each. In 2017 the plant produced 31.67 TWh of electric energy, 5.9% of French electricity production. Of the plant's six reactors, two entered service in 1980, two in 1981, and two in 1985.

The site employs 1,680 regular employees. , it became the second nuclear power station anywhere in the world to produce over one thousand terawatt-hours of electricity, following Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in Ontario, Canada, which had reached that milestone in 2009.

The reactors of Units 5 and 6 were initially intended for export to Iran, but the order was cancelled after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Their design, known as CPY, was the basis for the Chinese CPR-1000. An intermediate derivative of the reactor is called the M310.

Incidents

In 2006, when Unit 3 was taken offline for routine refueling, it was discovered that an electrical wire had not been plugged in correctly during the last outage in 2005. This ranked Level-1 on the INES Scale, the lowest level on the 7-point scale
In 2007, the plant experienced four separate events that qualified as Level 1 on the INES Scale.
In August 2009, during the annual exchange of fuel bundles in Reactor-1, one bundle got stuck to the upper handling structure, stopping the operations and causing the evacuation and isolation of the reactor's building.
On 11 August 2025, the plant was shut down after a swarm of jellyfish clogged the facility's cooling system.

Cooling water

The cooling water that carries waste heat from the plant is used for aquaculture of European seabass and gilt-head breams by Acquanord.

Economics

A major OVH datacentre is located next to the power station.

References

External links