Turbine fire shuts down Sequoyah reactor

The Unit 1 reactor at TVA's Sequoyah Nuclear Power Plant remains idle following a fire early Monday in the turbine building at the Soddy-Daisy plant.

Tennessee Valley Authority spokesman Ray Golden said plant workers manually shut down the reactor and TVA fire crews quickly extinguished a blaze apparently caused by a hydrogen gas leak in part of the electrical generator.

The Unit 1 reactor was refueled in November and was operating at full power at the time of the fire on the non-nuclear portion of the plant, he said.

The incident is under investigation, he said, but the blaze and reactor trip did not create any threat to the public or employees.

For competitive reasons, TVA does not comment on when the reactor might be reactivated, but the outage is expected to last for several days.