Emergency declared at nuclear power plant

Whew. Only 75 miles away from downtown Chicago, too.

Emergency declared at nuclear power plant


Exelon Nuclear officials declared a rare “site-area emergency” today at a northern Illinois nuclear power plant, but the public's health and safety never were threatened, state and federal regulators said.

If there is one area of the corporate world I trust implicitly to tell the truth, it is the energy sector. Yeah right. Waaaaaa!!

Update 2/21/06
According to the Trib, there have been plenty of other problems at this plant recently. Doh!

U.S. Rep. Jerry Weller (R-Ill.) requested NRC inspections last Wednesday, the day Exelon Nuclear announced radioactive tritium had leaked at Dresden Generating Station in Grundy County and Byron Nuclear Generating Station, about 25 miles southwest of Rockford.

Earlier, Exelon had disclosed four tritium spills at Braidwood Generating Station in far southwest Will County between 1996 and 2003. As a result, tritium was found in groundwater outside the plant at levels that exceed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards.

..The last site-area emergency was declared in 1991 at Nine Mile Point 2 reactor in New York when power was lost to key instruments used to monitor the reactor, Strasma confirmed.

NRC officials later said they would conduct a special investigation at LaSalle, and Nesbit said he expected Exelon to have a better idea Tuesday of what caused the malfunction.

Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Watchdog Project at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, said Monday's event at LaSalle “is an indication of aging of plant systems. It could very well be that it was a failure of sensor equipment.”

The event occurred at Unit 1, which entered service in 1982. Unit 2, which remained in operation Monday, entered service two years later.

Tags: Energy