A nuclear reactor at Entergy Corp.’s Arkansas Nuclear One was shut down at 7:50 a.m. Monday after a transformer exploded in an electrical switchyard at the power plant near Russellville.
The fire at the transformer was put out at 9:17 a.m., said Donna Gregory, an Entergy spokesman at the plant.
There was a “fault in the transformer that resulted in the fire,” said Mike Bowling, an Entergy spokesman.
No injuries were reported. Entergy has about 1,000 workers at the nuclear plant, including many contract workers.
The plant’s fire brigade began fighting the fire, but Entergy then requested offsite help, Gregory said. The nearby London Volunteer Fire Department was called in to help with the fire, Gregory said.
The federal Nuclear Regulator Commission labeled the shutdown an “unusual event,” the lowest of four nuclear emergency classifications. That means the event indicated a “potential degradation of the level of safety of a plant.”
The plant’s Unit 2 reactor will be kept offline while the cause of the explosion is investigated and repairs are determined, the Nuclear Regulator Commission stated. Power is being supplied to Unit 2 by an emergency diesel generator and one source of off-site power, the commission stated.
Unit 1 remains operating at 95 percent power, the commission stated.
There were no radiation leaks reported, the commission stated.
On March 31, Wade Walters, 24, was killed when a 1 million-pound, $20 million generator stator - a large stationary enclosure where electricity is generated - fell as it was being moved from Arkansas Nuclear One’s turbine building. Eight others were injured in that accident.
Unit 1 began producing electricity again about a month after that accident.
Information for this article was contributed by Christina Huynh of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Business, Pages 23 on 12/10/2013