Maryland plant damaged by hurricane winds as other US nuclear sites take precautionary measures

This article is more than 9 years old

This article is more than 9 years old

A nuclear reactor in Maryland has been shut down because of wind damage, while others were either taken offline or operating at reduced capacity as precautionary measures before the arrival of hurricane Irene on Sunday.

A reactor at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant in Lusby, Maryland, remained off-line on Sunday, after going into automatic shutdown when a piece of aluminum siding ripped from a nearby building damaged a transformer.

Constellation Energy, which operates the Lusby plant, said the facility was safe and that a second reactor was operating at full capacity. No power outages were expected because of the shutdown.

Maryland state emergency agency said the plant would reopen after inspection. "Number one will stay offline until they have folks that will crawl over every inch of it," its spokesman, Quentin Banks said.

It was the second complete shutdown caused by Irene, after authorities took a plant offline in New Jersey as a precaution before the storm.

Exelon Corporation decided on Saturday afternoon to take its Oyster Creek generator offline as Irene blew in. "It's really as a precaution, a conservative action, because we do expect hurricane force winds," Marshall Murphy, an Exelon spokesman, told reporters.

Fourteen nuclear plants from North Carolina to New Hampshire were in Irene's path when the hurricane headed up the east coast on Saturday.

In addition to the two shutdowns, some plants powered down as a safety measure – which also contributed to widespread power cuts. Progress Energy powered down its reactors in Brunswick, North Carolina, and Dominion Resources cut production at one reactor at its Millstone plant in New London, Connecticut, by 70%. Another Dominion plant in Virginia, which had gone down because of last week's earthquake, remained offline for Irene.