The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday announced that Watts Bar Nuclear Plant’s Unit 1 reactor shut down unexpectedly early Saturday morning.
“The reactor tripped due to a trip [malfunction] signal from the turbine or non-nuclear side of the plant,” said NRC spokesman Roger Hannah.
“The cause of the turbine trip is under investigation at this time,” said an NRC statement. “All systems functioned as designed with the exception of pressurizer backup heaters which failed to energize.”
TVA spokesman Ray Golden termed the unplanned outage “an uneventful shutdown caused by a non-nuclear piece of equipment with no implications from the reactor safety side.”
The reactor was restarted early Tuesday morning with no radiological problems, he said.