Coolant leak leads to Nome-wide blackout

Last Friday night at 10:43 p.m., the lights went off across Nome. Except for a few buildings whose generators buzzed to life, the whole town was without power for more than an hour.

Ken Morton, assistant manager and utility engineer for Nome Joint Utility System, told the Nugget that the outage was caused when a crack developed in a coupling that resulted in a quick loss of coolant to the power plant’s Engine #15.

“Engine #15 then powered down to protect itself and town went dark,” Morton said.

With replacement couplings on hand, power plant and line crew staff who responded to the scene were able to replace the part and the lost coolant. Power came back again at 11:53 p.m., and the crew then continued cleaning up the spilled coolant in the engine bay, Morton said.

“It was pretty quick considering it happened when it happened,” Morton said.

He said that the crack formed “after years of accumulated stress” while passing high-pressure, 200° F coolant.

“We would have expected evidence of a leak to have been observed during the hourly inspections of the operating engine,” Morton said. “This was an abrupt failure however.”

At least one issue may have resulted from the blackout: KUAC stopped transmitting over the local airwaves after the outage. Jim Dory who helps take care of the radio station’s equipment here said the satellite receiver is plugged into a UPS battery backup, so he was surprised to see it fail. “It was running fine up until the outage and did not come back on after the power was restored,” he said. Dory said he has been in touch with a KUAC technician about getting replacement parts.