The plant, one of three aty the PSEG generating complex in New Jersey, began sending electricity out over the regional power grid at 7:49 a.m., according to Joe Delmar, a spokesman for the plant’s operator, PSEG Nuclear.
– Edited by April Murelio –
According to a report on NJ.com, the Salem 1 nuclear reactor was returned to service Saturday morning after two and a half weeks of downtime. The inital shut down was caused by a transformer failure. Salem 1’s other two nuclear reactors, Salem 2 and Hope Creek, remained unaffected and in operation during Salem 1’s outage. On Saturday, Salem 2 was operating at full power while Hope Creek was running at about 90 percent power.
The plant, one of three aty the PSEG island generating complex in New Jersey, began sending electricity out over the regional power grid at 7:49 a.m., according to Joe Delmar, a spokesman for the plant’s operator, PSEG Nuclear. Salem 1 slowly started ascending to full power throughout the day on Saturday.
Salem 1 automatically tripped off-line late in the morning of July 7 after a fire suppression safety system was activated on one of its three transformers. Initially it was believed there had been a fire at the transformer, but later it was determined that it had been an arc flash that had activated the suppression system. During the incident, one of the transformer’s bushings was damaged.
PSEG replaced the bushing with a spare that PSEG had onsite at the complex. The replacement of this sort of bushing involves draining the transformer of about two tanker trucks worth of oil and ensuring all of the assembly was dried out before its use could resume.
A little more than half of the electricity consumed in New Jersey is nuclear power. This unit produces enough power for about one million homes. The three reactors at Artificial Island comprise the second largest commercial nuclear complex in terms of power output in the United States. PSEG Nuclear is in the process of extending the 40-year operating licenses of all three plants by 20 years.
PSEG has also submitted an application with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission for an Early Site Permit, the first step in possibly building a fourth reactor on the Island. While PSEG Nuclear has not officially committed to building another reactor, the company wants to have the plans in place should the economic climate and other factors be right to build a new plant.