Accident at Sequoyah Nuclear Plant, Soddy-Daisy, Tenn

[Ian David]

GLIDE Number: NC-20070125-9543-USA
Date / time: 25/01/2007 06:13:21
Event: Nuclear Event
Area: North-America
Country: USA
State/County: State of Tennessee
City: Unknow
Number of Deads: None or unknow
Number of Injured: None or unknow
Damage level: Minor


DESCRIPTION
A loosened air supply line connected to a steam generator system triggered the automatic shutdown of a reactor at the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant, the Tennessee Valley Authority said Wednesday. The reactor went off line when the problem was detected at 12:44 p.m. Tuesday, TVA spokesman John Moulton said. The air line attaches to a valve on the non-nuclear side of the plant that controls water flow to one of the plant's four steam generators. "Plant systems functioned as designed," Moulton said, with no danger to employees or the public. "The unit will be returned to service in the near future."


Situation Update No. 1 On 28.01.2007 at 05:34 GMT+2

A reactor at TVA's Sequoyah Nuclear Plant in Soddy-Daisy, Tenn., automatically shut down Tuesday when an air supply line severed from a steam generator system. TVA spokesman John Moulton said the plant systems functioned as designed and the shutdown posed no danger to employees or the public. About 12:45 p.m. Tuesday, the air supply line came unfastened from a valve that controls water flow to one of the plant's four steam generators, causing the valve to close. Sequoyah's Unit 2 reactor then shut down automatically. Moulton said staff at the plant will review the cause of the incident and bring the unit back online "in the near future." He said return-to-service information is competitive and TVA does not release predictions on the timing of a restart, although the federal utility will confirm when the reactor is running again. The incident was reported Wednesday on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Web site. Spokesman Ken Clark said the NRC's onsite inspectors at Sequoyah would monitor TVA's efforts to remedy the problem and restart the reactor. Moulton said the unit had been online for 28 days and operating at 100 percent capacity. He said the severed air supply line was located in the turbine building, a separate structure from the one that houses the nuclear reactor. Unit 1 of the two-reactor plant near Chattanooga was unaffected by Tuesday's incident, Moulton said. Sequoyah's two Westinghouse pressurized-water reactors generate enough electricity to supply about 1.3 million homes a day, according to TVA.

More:
http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/woalert_read.php?lang=eng&id=9543

[CottonBear]

1. My family used to own a lake house very near that plant. I used to water ski past the reactor.

:scared: This nuclear reactor is on an island in Lake Chickamauga which is a huge TVA lake formed by damming the Tennessee River back in the 1930s.

When the plant was nearing completion, every household within a certain radius got a supply of iodine pills to protect the thyroid in the event of a nuclear accident.

:scared:

[Theres-a]

2. Is it near

Those failing dams I was reading about last week?When I read this thread earlier,I thought about that dam story,in regards to our failing infrastructure,and how the nuclear plants are probably not well maintained either.

After reading your post,I wondered how that plant would fare underwater,if the dam burst.:scared:

[CottonBear]

3. The TVA TN River dam in Chattanooga is huge and and in very good condition.

The plant is upstream of the dam. If the lake was drained, the plant would still be on an island in the river channel. The lake is tremendous. It is a shipping channel for huge ocean going size boats and barges. I've been on a small (18 foot) boat that went through the locks. It was awesome. The elevation change from the lake to the river is huge. FDR dedicated the dam back in the 1930s. There are really cool photos of the event.

[MadHound]

4. Sounds like the safety systems functioned as designed. That's great!

The plant should be back up and running within a few days or so.

[Reterr]

5. K&R.nt