Following an outage brought on by April's tornado outbreak across the South, Virginia's Surry nuclear plant briefly restarted its unit 2 reactor but took the unit offline again Monday after detecting a problem in its cooling system.
Dominion Virginia Power operators restarted unit 2 last Thursday, bringing the unit up to nearly full power by Monday afternoon. It had been offline since April 16 when a tornado touched down near a switchyard and cut off outside power to the plant. Backup generators and safety systems functioned as planned, off-site power was restored and the utility has worked since then to restore full generation at the plant.
At unit 2, though, operators detected a problem in the unit's cooling ducts on Monday afternoon, according to a Dominion spokesman quoted by the Daily Press newspaper. He did not give a time frame for how long the reactor would remain offline. Unit 2's operation also has been delayed following allegations of asbestos exposure by plant contractors.
Dominion operates two, 799-megawatt Westinghouse three-loop reactors at the site northwest of Newport News, Va., according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Unit 1 was returned to operation April 25.