Unit 2 of the Cook nuclear power plant has been taken offline due to a leak on a charging pump discharge control valve.
Cook plant spokesperson Bill Downey tells us the problem was noticed by technicians around 11 p.m. on Wednesday and the unit was powered down around 8 a.m. Thursday.
“That’s a valve that supplies additional water to our reactor coolant system,” Downey said. “After taking a look at the leak, they determined that the safest way to make that repair because of the size of the leak and the proximity of the valve, the location of repair, they needed to take the unit offline.”
Downey says Unit 1 generates enough power to meet the demands of the system, so there’s no concern there.
“We’ve got Unit 1 is still at 100% power and currently there’s still plenty of capacity on the grid. We’re not in a hot market alert at the moment, but still we’re doing everything we can to protect the other unit. It’s still operating fine and we’re going to work as quickly as we can to get unit two back online.”
Downey says Cook can’t reveal much about the repair process for a problem like this because it’s bound by Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rules that prohibit power plants from releasing information that could indicate when their capacity might change. That’s because companies operating in the power purchasing market could use that information to their advantage.
Downey says if power purchasers knew when a plant might increase its output after an outage, then they could engage in a form of insider trading.
