The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Power plant back online following July outage
The Perry Nuclear Plant was back online early Aug. 6 following a shutdown that lasted more than a week.
The Perry Nuclear Plant was back online early Aug. 6 following a shutdown that lasted more than a week.
The plant shut down July 27 following regular weekly testing.
Tom Becker of Sitrick & Co., the company handling press for plant owner FirstEnergy Solutions, said the outage was caused by a turbine trip “attributed to a malfunction in the turbine overspeed protection testing circuitry that occurred during normal testing.” He said the malfunction has been repaired.
The plant, which was shutdown 7:29 p.m., July 27, was back online at 1:08 a.m., Aug. 6.
“During the forced outage, the plant systems and people performed as designed with no safety or human performance issues,” Becker said.
The unit is continuing to “ramp up to full power,” Becker said in an email sent at 3:35 p.m., Aug. 6.
Becker and U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesperson Prema Chandrathil said there was no nuclear safety threat from the outage.
Chandrathil said nuclear plants use heat to turn water into steam which then drives the turbine, also called the Main Turbine, that is connected to generators which then produce electricity.
“In this case, the plant operators were conducting planned equipment testing on the turbine when the turbine tripped (shut off),” Chandrathil said. “Once the turbine is tripped the reactor will also automatically shutdown which is a planned equipment response and what did occur.”
Chandrathil said the length of shutdown in these situations can vary depending on a variety of factors such as the issue, repair times and or necessary materials.