CHICAGO — A failed electrical insulator in a switchyard was to blame for the power failure that caused one of Exelon Energy's nuclear reactors in northern Illinois to shut down, company officials said Tuesday.
Officials hoped to replace the part by the end of the day. The company would then begin preparing to re-start the Unit 2 reactor at the Byron Generating Station about 95 miles northwest of Chicago, though it remained unclear how soon it could return to service, spokesman Paul Dempsey said.
The insulator, a piece of protective equipment that helps regulate the flow of electricity in the plant's switchyard, failed Monday morning and fell off of the metal structure to which it was attached. That interrupted power and caused the reactor to shut down automatically as a precaution.
It was not immediately clear what caused the insulator to fail, but the part will be sent to a lab for analysis, Dempsey said.
During the shut-down, steam was released to cool the reactor, but was being vented from the part of the plant where turbines produce electricity, not from within the nuclear reactor itself, officials said. The steam contains low levels of tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, but federal and plant officials insisted the levels were safe for workers and the public.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission declared the incident an "unusual event," the lowest of four levels of emergency. Commission officials also said the release of tritium was expected.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/industries/officials-trying-to-learn-what-happened-at-illinois-reactor-that-shut-down-amid-power-failure/2012/01/31/gIQAoMLIeQ_story.html
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