Fire breaks out at Arkansas Nuclear One

A fire that had been reported Monday morning at an Entergy auxiliary transformer at Arkansas Nuclear One Unit Two in Russellville has been extinguished, a company official said.

Donna Gregory, senior communication specialist at Arkansas Nuclear One, said that no evacuation took place at the facility and that an investigation into the blaze is ongoing.

The blaze started about 7:50 a.m. after there was a "fault in the transformer that resulted in the fire," Entergy spokesman Mike Bowling said.

The facility's Unit Two is offline, but Unit One is still online, Bowling said. No injuries have been reported, and the fire has been contained.

The auxiliary transformer is an electrical device that transfers energy and is not a nuclear portion of the plant, Bowling said.

The London Fire Department and Entergy's onsite responders worked to stop the fire.

Arkansas Department of Emergency Management spokesman Tommy Jackson said that the fire had not been extinguished within the 15 minutes of detection.

"The auxiliary transformer exploded in Unit Two, and there was fire within the protected area," he said.

Gov. Mike Beebe said after a speech Monday at the Arkansas Electric Cooperatives Directors' Winter Conference in Little Rock that he had been briefed on the fire and that there was "no damage to the actual nuclear reactor."

Information for this article was contributed by Gavin Lesnick of Arkansas Online.

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