Exelon: Limerick Unit 2 Reactor Coming Back Online

The Unit 2 reactor at Exelon Nuclear's Limerick Generating Station is back online, the company confirmed this morning.

"The unit is being returned to service," company spokesperson April Schilpp said. A reactor status page maintained by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) indicated that the reactor was at 3 percent power early this morning.

Schilpp added that Unit 2's main turbine was still "completely offline" and that the unit is not yet connected to the electrical grid.

The unplanned shutdown early Sunday morning that initially took the unit offline has been attributed to a fault in an actuator on the main turbine's control valve, Schilpp said. Repair crews are in the process of "completely rebuilding" the actuator.

Schilpp said that the turbine is "related to the electrical side" of the power plant and that the type of repairs underway are typical for "any industrial power plant, regardless of the kind of generation."

"Most of our plants operate 100 percent of the time, so there's more wear and tear," Schilpp said.

Schilpp said reports of a "second shutdown" at the plant on Monday described events that were part of the troubleshooting and repair process.

"The unit was already shut down," said Schilpp.

According to Schilpp, an "extremely conservative threshold" for reporting incidents to the NRC resulted in the Monday "scram" appearing in the agency's daily event notification log.

Schilpp could not say precisely when repairs would be completed or when Unit 2 would be reconnected to the electrical grid.