LITTLE ROCK — A small electrical fire at Arkansas Nuclear One near Russellville prompted an alert late Tuesday, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Entergy Arkansas Inc., which owns the plant.
No radiation was released as a result of the fire, and the plant continued to operate at full power.
"[The fire] affected a redundant piece of safety equipment, and there was no danger to the public or to the workers at the plant as a result," commission spokesman Victor Dricks said Wednesday.
A Level 2 alert, the second lowest of four emergency classifications, was declared at 11:05 p.m. Tuesday and ended at 1:33 a.m. Wednesday, he said.
Entergy notified the Arkansas Health Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, plant spokesman Phil Fisher said.
The brief electrical fire affected a circuit breaker that supplies a portion of the redundant power to plant safety equipment for Unit Two, Fisher said.
"One redundant system remained available," he said.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Entergy will conduct a routine follow-up review.
A similar problem occurred about a year ago, on Oct. 30, 2006, when a circuit-breaker was affected by a fire, Dricks said.
"That may or may not be related to this [recent fire]," he said.
In the previous event, a brief fire in an electrical cabinet forced the Unit Two reactor offline for several days. No injuries occurred and the public was not endangered, officials said at the time.
Less than two weeks after the October 2006 fire, electrical problems forced one of Nuclear One's two main feed pumps for Unit One to shut down. Plant officials temporarily reduced the reactor's output as a result.
"We took actions a year ago to evaluate equipment associated with the electrical busses to determine that they were in good shape," Fisher said.
"This latest incident, I don't know that there is anything in common or anything related. That's something we will determine," he said.
"When you look at the overall equipment reliability, it's quite outstanding, because over the past decade our production has consistently improved for numerous reasons," including equipment reliability, Fisher said.
"This incident this week is not something we would have wanted, but every time things don't go as they're supposed to we learn lessons and we improve as a result of it," he said.
On May 30, 2006, Arkansas Nuclear One had a spill of 500 to 1,000 gallons of slightly radioactive water, which was contained on-site.
Nuclear One's Unit One began commercial operation in December 1974 and Unit Two went online in March 1980, Fisher said.
Business, Pages 29, 30 on 10/25/2007