February 27, 2006

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No Injuries Reported in Small Electrical Fire at Byron Nuclear Plant
Associated Press
Belleville News-Democrat, IL
February 24, 2006

BYRON, Ill. - A small electrical fire broke out Friday at the Byron Nuclear Generating Station, but it caused no injuries and no radiation was released, Exelon Nuclear officials said.

Electrical equipment belched smoke around 9 a.m. in a room in a protected area of the plant, which is owned by Chicago-based Exelon Corp. The smoke stopped after electricity to the equipment was cut off, the company said.

No one at the plant reported seeing flames, just smoke, said Byron station spokesman Bob Kartheiser. The small fire did not affect operations at the plant, which is about 25 miles southwest of Rockford.

The incident comes after federal regulators were ordered this week to inspect Illinois nuclear power plants following a brief emergency at Exelon's LaSalle station and a series of radioactive tritium leaks at other Exelon plants, including the Bryon station.

The Will County state's attorney's office has said it began investigating why the company did not disclose until recently a series of tritium-containing wastewater leaks between 1996 and 2003 at its Braidwood Generating Station, located about 60 miles southwest of Chicago.

The company said last week it also has found elevated levels of radioactive tritium in water that leaked from the Byron plant and the Dresden Generating Station in Grundy County. Exelon has said the leaks were not a health or safety threat.

An emergency was declared at the LaSalle Generating Station on Monday when operators could not confirm the position of three control rods after the reactor shut down. Officials said there were no injuries, no radiological releases and no equipment damage.

Kartheiser said the company is investigating the cause of Friday's electrical fire, which caused the company to declare an Unusual Event, the lowest of four emergency classifications defined by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.