Local/State
FLAMES DESTROY 1 OF 2 TRANSFORMERS; Fire cuts output at Brunswick plant
Saturday, September 23, 2000

BY BRIAN FEAGANS, Staff Writer
Wilmington Morning Star
Copyright 2000 Wilmington Star-News

The Brunswick Nuclear Plant in Southport was operating at about half capacity Friday after an early-morning fire destroyed one of its two main transformers.

On-site firefighters extinguished the blaze at 4:02 a.m., 16 minutes after sensors detected it. There were no injuries or releases of radiation, said Ann Mary Carley, a spokesman for Carolina Power & Light Energy, Inc., which owns the plant outside Southport.

The blaze has forced the company to shut down one of the plant's two nuclear reactors until it can replace the transformer, which readies electricity produced at the plant for power lines. Ms. Carley said CP&L has a spare transformer on site but didn't know when it would be ready.

It was still unclear what caused the accident Friday, she said, though the company is conducting an investigation.  Fire sensors automatically shut down the 811-megawatt reactor Friday morning and activated a sprinkler system that contained the blaze. The fire was far from the nuclear reactors, which sit on the other side of a turbine building the length of a football field.

"You're quite a distance through a number of barriers to come anywhere near it," Ms. Carley said. "We look at it as a non-nuclear situation."

The Southport Fire Department was called in for backup but was not needed, she said.
The plant's other reactor never shut down because a separate transformer distributes its 820 megawatts of power.

Because the fire lasted more than 10 minutes, plant operators had to declare the blaze an "unusual event," the lowest level on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's four-tiered scale for accidents. It ended at 5:12 a.m.

Ted Easlick, the NRC's senior resident inspector at the Brunswick Plant, said it's too early to tell whether the fire will draw a fine or other penalty.  "You would be looking for a major violation of a requirement or procedure," he said. "Preliminarily, I would say not, but we'll see."

Mr. Easlick inspected the site immediately after the fire and will file a report on the incident.
At daybreak, the most visible evidence of the fire was soot along a concrete wall at the adjacent turbine building, he said.

While the turbine is down, CP&L will increase electricity production at one of its 17 other plants to make up for the temporary shortfall, Ms. Carley said.

The transformer fire was a first for the Brunswick facility, she said.  The plant has had an up-and-down compliance history in southeastern Brunswick County.  It made the NRC's "watch list" of the country's worst-run nuclear plants in 1992. But by 1995 the plant had the highest possible rating in all four safety and performance categories.  That was followed by four violation notices from the NRC in 1996, one of which came with a $150,000 fine.

Since then, the plant hasn't had any citations and has received generally good marks in regular report cards from the NRC. An agency commissioner gave the plant a thumbs-up when visiting in February.