A three-person team from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is on site at the Cook nuclear power plant in Bridgman this week conducting a special inspection into the failure of diesel generators during routine tests.
NRC spokesperson Prema Chandrathil tells us the Cook plant has four diesel generators intended to keep essential functions running in the event of a power loss from Cook’s outside provider. Only one generator is actually needed to maintain essential safety functions, but the generators have failed a total of four times during tests over the past two years. The NRC wants to understand why.
“Special inspections are not unusual,” Chandrathil said. “We conduct special inspections to get a better understanding of a technical issue, to better understand what happened, why it happened, what actions the company took to fix the problem and prevent it from happening again.”
Chandrathil says in addition to the four main generators, the plant has two back-up generators on site. All of the extra generators are because the NRC requires redundancy.
Chandrathil says at no point did the Cook plant operate in an unsafe manner. Still, the NRC team is investigating.
“These areas of expertise include electrical, mechanical engineering, as well as plant system interactions. Ultimately, at the end of this, there will be a report that will be made available once the inspection is complete, and that will take about 45 days after the inspection is complete.”
The NRC team is expected to complete its inspection Friday. Cook plant representatives told us they can’t comment on the situation at this time. Of the four generator failures, one occurred in 2022, one was in 2023, and two were during tests this year.
