Plant Fire at Peach Bottom

Aug 18 - York Daily Record

Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station declared a low-grade emergency Tuesday evening following a small fire that started on the roof of an emergency diesel generator building.

Shortly before 6 p.m., a worker at the plant spotted smoke coming from the roof of the building that houses the plant's E-3 emergency diesel generator.

That worker alerted plant officials to the smoke. The officials then dispatched an onsite fire brigade to the building. The brigade extinguished the fire at 6:35 p.m. The fire posed no threat to the safe operation of the plant or the surrounding public, said April Schilpp, a spokeswoman for the power station.

Basically, hot exhaust pipes that flow from one of the plant's four diesel generators to the top of the building came in contact with roofing material, she said.

As a result, the generator's exhaust gasket, on the roof on the outside the building, caught fire. Plant officials and NRC resident inspectors will continue to investigate the cause and aftermath of the fire.

The fire caused no damage to the emergency diesel generator, Schilpp said.

At the time of the fire, the plant had completed about 19 hours of a scheduled 24-hour endurance test of the E-3 emergency generator.

The plant performs endurance tests on each of the four diesel generators twice a year, Schilpp said.

Each generator is housed inside its own reinforced concrete building. The buildings are next to one another, she said.

Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station's emergency diesel generators are the plant's primary source of backup electricity should the site lose power. They would provide energy to the plant's key safety systems and help in the safe shutdown of the plant, said Neil Sheehan, an NRC spokesman.

While the plant's fire brigade extinguished the fire without the aid of offsite responders, the power station did contact the NRC within minutes of the fire being spotted.

Plant officials declared an unusual event fifteen minutes later. An unusual event refers to a process that has occurred within the plant that could potentially degrade the level of safety at the site. This level of alert is the lowest of four emergency classifications followed by the NRC. The classifications are an unusual event, an alert, an on-site area emergency and a general emergency.

The planted ended the unusual event at 8:40 p.m.

Plant officials will inspect each diesel generator to check if a similar problem could occur, Sheehan said.

Tuesday's fire was not the first time the plant had experienced problems with its emergency diesel generator.

In June 2003, NRC inspectors found that plant technicians had not adequately tightened bolts on a joint on a different emergency diesel generator during a maintenance procedure.

As a result, lube oil leaked from the joint and caused a small fire on the exhaust manifold during a test.

Sheehan indicated that the NRC does not believe that the two fires are related.

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