Extended Outage at OKG with the Purpose of Improving the Communicable Disease Prevention and Control
This year's outage at OKG will be extended by approximately three weeks. The decision to move forward the works, which will begin on 1 August, has been made in order to prevent the risk of the Coronavirus spreading among the workers. The revised activity plan will as of now be based on the aim of having as few co-workers as possible on site at the same time.
A decision has today been made to extend this year's outage at unit Oskarshamn 3 (O3). This measure is taken with reference to the current pandemic and with the aim of strengthening the communicable disease prevention and control for all our workers. The number of personnel working at the unit at the same time will be reduced by scheduling the measures in sequences instead of in parallel. The shutdown period will therefore be slightly more than three weeks longer than originally planned.
- Our aim is that no individual will have to risk coming down with the Coronavirus at our workplace, says Mats Ekblad, Plant Manager Unit O3. Limiting the number of personnel working at the plant at the same time is an important condition for us to be able to maintain the barriers for disease prevention and control that we have set up this spring.
The current scheduled measures will require approximately 900 contracted resources. The scheduling was originally based on having the most efficient implementation as possible, which required that the major part of the personnel would have to be on site at the same time. With reference to preventing the spread of the disease, it is a major advantage that the works are now being divided as to distribute the need for resources for a longer period of time.
- One of the major measures to be taken this year is the installation of a new safety system, supplementing the existing ones, says Mats Ekblad. It is obvious that the personnel must be able to perform these installations under safe conditions, and the extended outage period means that we have the necessary planning conditions for making this a reality.
Unit O3 is by its capacity on 1,450 MW an important part of the delivery capacity of the Nordic electricity supply system. Extending the outage by bringing forward the start date of the outage will thus not have any impact on the scheduled restart on 26 October. The public will therefore be able to count on maximum delivery capacity from unit O3 during the winter months.