Reactor Recirculation Pumps Force Fermi Nuclear Power Station Offline

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Plant workers at the Fermi Nuclear Power Station (Newport, Michigan) were in a holding pattern Thursday afternoon, January 31, 2008, not yet knowing why the nuclear powered generating unit they support was in hot shutdown mode, forcing it offline and sending the radioactive fuel bundles into the protective core of the reactor. On Friday, officials found that two failed reactor recirculation pumps tripped the unit offline, yet they still do not know what caused the pumps to fail. Until they know exactly what caused the pumps to trip off the unit, they have no set return date.

The investigation might be easier if they were performing maintenance or tests on the pumps at the time they tripped the unit, as that would likely be human error that would have caused both pumps to fail. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Neither pump was undergoing testing or maintenance at the time of its failure, which makes uncovering what would cause such a trip a lot harder to determine. Today, they are still investigating the situation and hope to have a better understanding of the cause by the end of the weekend.

The (Enrico) Fermi Nuclear Power Station began operation in 1957 with Fermi 01, one of the first nuclear-powered electrical-generating units in the world. The unit, which was rated at nearly 100 megawatts (MW), was in operation until 1972 and finally decommissioned in late 1975. The facility now operates one unit (Fermi 02) which is a General Electric (GE) boiling water reactor rated at nearly 1,150 MW. The facility is owned and operated by DTE Energy (Detroit, Michigan).

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