OMAHA, Nebraska - a small fire briefly assommé for fuel cooling system used a nuclear plant in Nebraska, but the temperatures did never exceed the levels of security and power was quickly restored, federal officials said Wednesday.
The electrical system, pumps of cool spent fuel in a basin of water running has been disrupted by electrical fire alleged Tuesday, although a pump was restored shortly after the incident, and another was running Wednesday, utility officials said.
Pumps are a key element of safety equipment because pumping systems is not for several days and is not fixed, the cooling water could be boiled away and eventually cause radioactive releases.
While a backup diesel pump was available at the Station of Fort Calhoun, it was not necessary, said Mike Jones, a spokesman for the Omaha Public Power District, which operates the plant. No radiation was released, and no other major damage was reported.
Spokesperson of Nuclear Regulatory Commission on that eliot Brenner said power was restored to the first pump about two hours, the utility said that he took only one hour.
Pool of fuel of fort Calhoun was not physically damaged, and the utility considers that it would take about 80 hours before the water in the pool began to boiling and evaporation, give workers time to react.
The reactor was arrested in April for refueling and has not restarted because of the rise of water along the Missouri River. Federal officials said temperatures in the pool never topped 83 degrees.
"It was not yet warm water of the bath," said Brenner.
Representatives of the State of Nebraska have been notified, but the utility was able to control the fire before any significant response State was necessary.
"I've seen is, from our point of view, that Fort Calhoun emergency procedures were activated, used and initiated by the plan in response to the incident, said Al Berndt, Director Assistant of the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency." In this regard, I am very comfortable with what happened. ?
The incident comes after the crisis of the Fukushima Dai-ichi Central nuclear to the Japan has prompted the U.S. regulators and industry representatives to review safety store around 55 000 tonnes of past, radioactive fuel in the pools of water across the country.
Analysts have long recommended spent fuel be removed after several years of swimming pools, and placed in dry casks on the Earth. Displacement of fuel in dry storage would reduce the amount of radioactivity that can be released in an accident at a swimming pool, said Robert Alvarez, researcher at the Institute of political studies that studied the issue. Dry casks are more resistant than the pools of accidental damage or a terrorist attack.
Alvarez, former political Secretary to the U.S. energy, said losing pumps for an hour is not a crisis, he said that the incident raises issues of broader policies.
"Whenever one of these things happens, you have to ask when a more serious event will happen?," he said.
Nuclear Central swimming pools at most take spent fuel several times more than originally planned. During the construction of the current fleet of nuclear power plants, swimming pools are considered as a temporary storage option. It has assumed fuel spent could be removed, either for reprocessing in fuel costs or shipped to underground repositories.
These plans were disappointed. President Jimmy Carter banned reprocessing of nuclear fuel out of fear that the technology would allow more countries to build nuclear weapons. Administration of the President Barack Obama cancelled a long plan fails to complete an underground repository for nuclear fuel irradiated at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
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Henry reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writer Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this report.
Henry is available at http://www.twitter.com/rhenryAP.
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