Community Corner
Unscheduled Shutdown at Limerick Nuclear Plant
Unit 2 automatically shut down at 5:02 this morning. Plant personnel are still investigating the cause. The same unit went through an unscheduled shutdown in February.
The Unit 2 nuclear reactor at the shut down automatically at 5:02am today. Operators at the plant are still determining the cause of the shutdown, the company said in a statement issued late this morning.
The company said the shutdown occurred "after a turbine tripped following scheduled testing and maintenance on an electrical system in the non-nuclear side of the plant."
"The plant responded as expected, safely and without incident," the company said.
Find out what's happening in Limerick-Royersford-Spring Citywith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Unit 1 is still operating at full power.
This is the second unscheduled shutdown for Unit 2 this year. was attributed to a fault in the station's stator water cooling system.
Find out what's happening in Limerick-Royersford-Spring Citywith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Unit 2 received a . A company spokesperson said Sunday that this morning's shutdown was unrelated to either the February incident or to the recent transformer replacement.
"The problem is not associated with cooling water systems," said April Schlipp, Senior Manager of Communications with Exelon Nuclear.
Schilpp could not say when Unit 2 would return to operation.
Representatives from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) , which they said was in the top tier of grading on the commission's “action matrix”, a scale that delineates degrees of regulatory response to inspection reports.
Exelon Nuclear is in the process of submitting a license-renewal application to the NRC that would extend the operating license of Unit 1 and Unit 2 into the 2040s. The company is hosting a "community information night" at the plant on Wednesday, June 8, from 5:00 to 7:30pm.
