EDF stops refuelling at Tricastin 2 after incident

PARIS Nov 6 (Reuters) - An incident at EDF's Tricastin plant in southeast France late on Thursday forced the company to stop refuelling operations at the reactor 2, which started on Oct. 31, it said on Friday.

The incident occurred during refuelling of the reactor, when a fuel assembly got stuck in the pressure vessel, EDF said in a statement.

A similar incident took place in Sept. 2008 in the same reactor during refuelling operations and it took around two months for EDF to resolve the problem. "The incident took place at 2215 GMT," a source at the plant told Reuters on Friday. "We are very worried about this especially as this already happened just a year ago," he added.

EDF said it had been able to quickly detect the incident thanks to measures which were put in place after it happened in 2008.

"Experts at the plant are working with national teams of EDF and Areva CEPFi.PA engineers to stabilise the position of the assembly and proceed to its unhooking and its transfer," EDF said in a statement. (Reporting by Muriel Boselli)