Monday 22 April 2013

Small fire at Hartlepool nuclear power plant

The fire brigade were called to a small fire at the Hartlepool nuclear power station over the weekend.

The plant operator EDF Energy confirmed there was an oil leak and small fire on the lagging around part of the turbine equipment in unit 2 on Saturday around 6.30pm, which was totally extinguished within two hours.

A spokesperson for EDF told ELN that it was “actually not a fire” and more of a “smouldering rag” but called the local Cleveland brigade under their strict safety rules.

Hartlepool was built in 1969 and is currently scheduled for decommissioning in 2019. Its two reactors are capable of generating 1180 MW, enough for nearly 2.5 million households.

The fire was sparked while reactor 2 was being brought back into service after a statutory outage. Reactor 1 at the station has been unaffected and continues to operate at full power.