NRC to review Robinson nuclear plant shutdown

A reactor trip, or automatic shutdown occurred last Thursday at the Robinson Nuclear power plant near Hartsville. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent a special inspection team to the power plant on Tuesday to review the circumstances surrounding the shutdown. The plant is operated by Progress Energy.

Spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Roger Hannah says the inspection team will look further into what triggered the reactor trip.

We wanted to make sure that we understood exactly what happened, what actions the operators took during the event and immediately after. Also, if there’s any connection to this and the event that they had earlier in March that involved some similar kinds of shutdown issues.

Hannah says it’s important to know what caused the shutdown.

In addition to looking at the circumstances surrounding the plant shutdown, they’ll also look at corrective actions the company took following this as well as corrective actions they may have taken following the March event, to see if there anythings that were not completed or to see if those corrective actions were sufficient to prevent this sort of thing from happening.

Hannah says the team will look into other issues and “whether or not there are generic issues that might apply to other systems or other events at Robinson as well as other nuclear plants in the country.”

The inspection team will be on site for approximately a week and return in 45 days with a detailed report on the incident.