nuclear-news

No quick restart for Virginia nuclear plant

NRC rejects quick restart at Virginia nuclear plant, HOUSTON,   Sep 9, 2011  (Reuters) by Eileen O’Grady; Editing by Marguerita Choy– Nuclear regulators shot down an ambitious five-week timeline proposed to restart Dominion’s (D.N) two North Anna reactors in Virginia during a public meeting on Thursday to discuss the Aug. 23 earthquake that knocked the station offline.

The 1,806-megawatt station has remained shut since it automatically tripped last month after the unusually strong 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck roughly 12 miles (19 km) from the plant in Mineral, Virginia…..

Dominion officials said it now appears the reactors shut when the earthquake caused a problem inside the cores at both units rather than from the loss of outside power to the plant as initially reported. “It looks like the (fuel) rods were going into the core prior to the transformer opening,” possibly from a relay problem, a Dominion executive said.

Dominion is still working to understand the “root cause” of the plant shutdown as multiple automatic trip signals from various indicators were received within seconds of the quake.    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/09/utilities-operations-dominion-northanna-idUSN1E78724S20110909

September 10, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA