Browns Ferry Shuts Down Reactor Second Time in Three days

 February 19, 2009

By JAY REEVES Associated Press Writer
Mechanical problems forced the second shutdown of a reactor at
the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in three days, but regulators said Thursday the mishaps aren't a sign of more serious trouble for the
Tennessee Valley Authority.
The plant's Unit 1 shut down automatically early Wednesday
because of a problem with fans that are used to cool the electrical
connection that links the plant to the power grid. Operators had to
manually shut down Unit
2 on Monday because of another problem with cooling water in an
electric turbine.
TVA said the two problems are not related, and a spokesman for
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the back-to-back problems were
"totally coincidental."
"There's nothing the same here other than they're mechanical
(problems) on the non-nuclear side," said Joey Ledford of the federal
agency's Atlanta office.
Browns Ferry will not come under increased scrutiny because of
the dual outages at the three-reactor plant, Ledford said.
TVA spokesman Jason Huffine said engineers were trying to figure
out what caused both shutdowns.
The plant's third reactor continued operating at 100 percent, he
said, and the twin outages did not hurt the utility's ability to
provide power to its customers.
"We could turn on an additional coal plant if needed," he said.
Browns Ferry is one of three TVA nuclear plants that generate
about 30 percent of all the power the agency supplies in Tennessee,
Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia.
Idle for 22 years amid safety and management concerns, the Unit 1
reactor was restarted in 2007 following a renovation that took five
years and cost $1.8 billion. The two other reactors at Brown's Ferry
were restarted in the 1990s after extensive work.
Power generation at Browns Ferry was reduced significantly last
August after a string of problems that have since been repaired.