March 5, 2006

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Indian Point 2 Shut Down
By Greg Clary
The Journal News
March 2, 2006

BUCHANAN — Indian Point 2 workers are expecting to get the nuclear plant back online in a few days after it was shut down yesterday when a carpenter inadvertently turned off electrical power to the control rods used to slow the reactor.

The contractor was building a scaffolding along the wall of the huge tower about 2:30 p.m. when he bumped an industrial-sized light switch 10 feet off the ground and cut off power to the control rods, said Jim Steets, a spokesman for Entergy Nuclear Northeast, the plant's owner.

"There's no cover over the switch because it's 10 feet off the ground," Steets said. "It was an accident. We could be back up in a couple of days."

Nuclear Regulatory Commission resident inspectors were quickly informed of yesterday's malfunction, which NRC and Indian Point officials said posed no threat to the public.

"Our resident inspectors ... will be reviewing the event and the way it was responded to," said NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan. "The company will most likely have to do its own root-cause assessment of what happened."

The plant had been operating continuously since Dec. 24, 2005, after a two-day shutdown to repair a valve on the nonradioactive side of the plant that could not be worked on while the plant was operating.

Without electricity to keep them in place, 12 of the reactor's 53 control rods fell into place as they would if all were used to shut down the nuclear reaction. A full shutdown had to follow, according to procedure, and was executed without incident, Steets said.

The control rods together act as a brake on the nuclear reaction, which is fueled by about 4,000 surrounding rods that contain uranium.

Indian Point 3 had a similar problem with control rods in late September, when faulty electrical wiring caused a break in the electrical current.

The shutdown comes two days after Indian Point and state health officials released information showing that radioactive water was making its way to the Hudson River from a spent-fuel pool leak at the same nuclear reactor.

During the Indian Point 3 shutdown in the fall, the company's ability to create electricity was cut about in half, from 2,000 megawatts to 1,000, an amount similar to yesterday's shutdown.

The regional power grid is not likely to be affected, Steets said. It has about a reserve of about 1,800 megawatts, and state officials noted during the fall shutdown that while it could have an impact on short-term electricity prices, it should have little impact on supply.