A fire broke out at the Third Nuclear Power Plant (
Officials say the accident, the most serious of its kind in Taiwan's history, did not cause any radiation leaks or pose any risk to the nation's power supply.
According to Taiwan Power Co (Taipower,
The accident occurred after two electricity generators, No. 1 and No. 2, were closed down early Saturday morning because salty deposits from fog triggered an electricity transmission malfunction, plant officials said. Sudden short circuits occurred on four electric transmission lines connecting the power plant and two high voltage towers at Ta-peng (
Officials from Taipower admitted yesterday that short circuits could be attributed to a failure to remove the salty particles stuck on electricity transmission lines.
The generators are used to produce electricity for part of the process of cooling the plant's nuclear reactors.
Early yesterday, just as plant officials were writing an accident report to the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) about the transmission failure, the fire broke out.
The fire erupted when operators tried to use diesel-powered generators to bring electricity generator No. 1 back on line.
The emergency measure unfortunately caused two breakers, commonly known as switchers, to malfunction. The mechanical malfunction increased the temperature on the curcuit and soon heavy smoke damaged more than 100 breakers, officials said.
They denied, however, that an explosion occurred subsequent to the fire when the generator was trying to get back on line.
"No explosion occurred. We are still figuring out what the real cause of the fire was," Chen Pu-tsan (
Chen said that, fortunately, fire extinguishers quickly emitted carbon dioxide and prevented further damage.
Chen said that it would be impossible for generator No. 1 to function in the near future because it would take time to repair the breakers.
Left with no other option, operators at the plant started backup, diesel-powered electric generators soon after the accident to supply electricity.
Chen stressed that the incident would not effect consumers because the plant's reserve electricity output of 1,900 megawatts would make up for the shortage.
Officials at the plant say that because generator No. 2 was not damaged it may be fixed more quickly than No. 1, but they had no idea how long that would be.
The schedule for restarting generators has to be approved by the AEC, which oversees the plant.
Taipower has sped-up the work of removing salt particles from electricity transmission lines and the AEC has already begun an investigation into the accident.
AEC officials said that the council might restrict the plant's operation or ask Taipower to file a more detailed report if human error is discovered.
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