Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) yesterday reactivated the first reactor of the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里), which had unexpectedly shut down on Saturday.
The company said the incident posed no danger of a leak.
The shutdown was caused by a malfunction in the relay protection system of the reactor’s main generator, an electromagnetic device designed to trip the generator when overcurrent or a fault is detected, Taipower spokesperson Lin Te-fu (林德福) said.
The relay was wrongly tripped, because it turned out that there was no problem with the reactor or the generator, Lin said.
The relay was replaced and a trial operation conducted before the reactor was restarted, he said.
The reactor was running at 59 percent capacity as of press time last night.
The Atomic Energy Council late on Sunday approved the company’s reactivation plan, saying all the reactor’s safety systems were functioning normally and the incident did not compromise the reactor’s integrity.
The council said the shutdown was a zero-degree incident on the international nuclear and radiological event scale, which means that there is no safety significance and no danger of a nuclear leak.
Taipower said that the two-day shutdown left only two of the nation’s six reactors working, but it did not lead to a power crunch because it has a reserve capacity of between 8 percent and 11 percent even without Guosheng’s first reactor.
The first reactor in the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Shihmen District (石門) has been out of operation for more than a year due to a loose handle on a fuel rod cask, while the plant’s second reactor is undergoing annual maintenance.
The second reactor of the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County’s Ma-anshan Township (馬鞍山) was shut down last month after loose screws were discovered during an inspection.
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