Mechanical problems took two reactors in the Northeast offline Friday.
At the Salem plant in New Jersey, operators took unit 2 offline at 10:01 a.m. when a control rod became mispositioned during regular testing. Quoting a PSEG spokesman, the South Jersey Times reported that one control rod "dropped out of its expected position," which the plant believes was caused by a blown fuse. The subsequent shutdown included the addition of boron to the coolant to keep the reactor within regulatory specifications.
In Connecticut, unit 2 of Dominion's Millstone plant was shut down on a breaker trip affecting a group of pressurizer proportional heaters. According to a report filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the loss of the 480-volt power supply required a manual shutdown, per technical specifications. One of the emergency diesel generators was offline for planned maintenance at the time. The remainder of the unit was in a normal electrical configuration, no leakage was suspected and the breaker trip was under investigation.