The Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio declared an alert for just over two hours Wednesday morning following a small fire on site.
An event notification report from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that a leaking water pipe caused a breaker to arc in an auxiliary building. Because the incident affected an emergency ventilation fan in the control room, at 2:22 a.m. plant operator FirstEnergy declared an alert – the second lowest of the NRC's emergency statuses.
Plant personnel quickly extinguished the fire. The NRC noted it did not affect core cooling or power supplies to the Babcock & Wilcox pressurized water reactor, which has been shut down for a reactor pressure vessel head replacement since Oct. 1.
At the Brunswick plant in North Carolina, Wednesday morning brought a leak that prompted the declaration of an unusual event, the lowest of the NRC's emergency categories.
According to an event notification report, Carolina Power and Light Co. operators saw drywell floor drain leakage increase to above 10 gallons per minute as they brought unit 2 online. The unusual event was declared at 3:01 a.m., followed shortly by the manual shutdown of the General Electric boiling water reactor from about 7 percent power. The leak diminished as the reactor powered down, and the unit exited the unusual event at 8:15 a.m.