The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday that it had begun a special inspection at the River Bend Station nuclear power plant to look into circumstances surrounding an unplanned reactor shutdown that occurred on Jan. 9.
The Entergy Operations Inc. power plant was operating at full power on that date, when a lightening strike caused a momentary surge in the plant's offsite power supply, which triggered the unplanned shutdown of the plant located in St. Francisville, Louisiana.
In a statement, the NRC noted that “operators took appropriate actions to place the plant in a safe shutdown condition.” In addition, however, the regulator said that on Jan. 10, “operational errors led to a one hour loss of shutdown cooling.”
“The purpose of this special inspection is to better understand the circumstances surrounding the loss of shutdown cooling, determine if operator response was appropriate, and review the licensee's corrective actions to ensure that the cause of the event, including associated equipment problems and any contributing operator actions have been effectively addressed,” NRC Regional IV Administrator Marc Dapas said.
Inspectors assigned to the plant will spend about a week evaluating the licensee's root cause analysis, maintenance of some plant systems and adequacy of corrective actions. An inspection report will be made available to the public 45 days after the end of the inspection.