S.C. nuke plant reports weekend fire; second at U.S. plant this year

A fire in reactor coolant pump insulation at South Carolina’s Robinson nuclear power plant prompted an emergency declaration on Saturday, according to a report posted this morning by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

It was the second reported fire this year at a U.S. commercial nuclear plant this year, according to NRC records.

There were no reported injuries. The plant’s fire brigade extinguished it about a half-hour after alarms sounded, according to the NRC report.

Duke Energy Progress, which operates Robinson Unit 2 about 26 miles northwest of Florence, declared an Unusual Event at 3 p.m. Eastern time. The NRC defines that classification as the lowest of its four emergency levels. The declaration cited a fire that had not been extinguished within 15 minutes.

Fire alarms were received at 2:48 p.m. Operators secured reactor coolant pump B, where insulation was burning, and the plant fire brigade responded. Robinson notified the NRC Operations Center at 3:12 p.m. The brigade put out the fire at 3:15 p.m., 27 minutes after the first alarms.

Primary containment was set, and its pressure and temperature did not noticeably change, according to information the operator provided to the NRC. A reflash watch was posted to monitor for the fire restarting.

The plant ended the Unusual Event at 3:47 p.m., less than an hour after declaring it, and notified state and local authorities and the NRC’s resident inspector. Federal homeland security and emergency management offices also received notifications.

The NRC report lists no scram, or rapid reactor shutdown, and power at 0 percent before and after the fire. Robinson Unit 2 is a Westinghouse pressurized water reactor.

The year’s earlier fire occurred May 18 at DTE Electric’s Fermi Unit 2 in Michigan, about 25 miles northeast of Toledo, Ohio. In that incident, operators manually shut down the reactor in an event described as “non-complicated.”

Across the U.S., technology companies including Microsoft and Google are turning to nuclear plants to help power data center expansion. Microsoft’s 20-year agreement with Constellation supports restarting the Crane Clean Energy Center in Pennsylvania, with about 835 megawatts of capacity, while Google’s agreement with Kairos Power calls for up to 500 megawatts of new nuclear capacity by 2035.

An August incident at Arizona’s Palo Verde Unit 3, which remained at 100 percent power, was excluded because personnel found no smoke or fire after a containment fire alarm could not be verified within 30 minutes.

Last month, the Savannah River Site operated by the U.S. Department of Energy, which stores surplus and used nuclear material, declared an emergency after a fire at that location. No contamination was reported as a result of that incident.