A local nuclear reactor is back offline, just a day after coming back online.
Cook Nuclear Plant announced that at 7:44 a.m. Thursday, the plant’s Unit 2 was automatically shut down due to high water in the unit’s No. 3 steam generator.
The cause of the trip, which occurred as the unit was being brought back to full power following the unit’s recent refueling outage, is still being investigated, according to a press release.
“The public was never in any danger, no personnel [were in danger],” said Cook Communications Manager Bill Downey. “Normally, when we follow a refueling outage, we have to take some time to ramp the unit back up to full power after we sync it to the grid. It’s a pretty long process, but we got to a point where one of or four steam generators had too much water in it, and that’s the condition that caused an automatic trip to the unit.”
The steam generators provide the high-pressure steam that powers the unit’s main turbine generator to produce electricity. According to the press release, plant operators followed proper protocols to safely remove the reactor from service, electric service to customers was not impacted.
“Now, we’re looking into the underlying root cause of the condition,” Downey said.
Cook Unit 1 remains at 100 percent power. Return to service information was not provided for competitive reasons, according to the release.
