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WARRENVILLE, Ill., Feb 20, 2006 /PRNewswire-FirstCall
Operators at the LaSalle Generating Station declared a "site area emergency" at 12:28 a.m. (CST) Monday during shutdown of the Unit 1 reactor for a scheduled refueling outage and exited the emergency condition at 4:27 a.m. Monday. There were no injuries, no radiological releases from the plant and no equipment damage. The Unit 1 reactor was safely shut down and remains in that condition. After operators reset the rod position indication system, only one rod of the 185 control rods indicated out of position. The plant is designed to remain safely shutdown in this condition. As a result, the station exited the emergency condition according to procedures at 4:27 a.m. Exelon Nuclear personnel are working to determine why the control rod indications showed that rods were not inserted properly. A site area emergency is the second highest level of federal emergency classification established by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The shutdown of LaSalle Unit 1 will not affect Exelon Nuclear's ability to meet power supply commitments. LaSalle Generating Station is in Brookfield Township in LaSalle County, Ill., about 55 miles southwest of Chicago. Unit 1 began commercial service in 1982 and Unit 2 in 1984. Each of the LaSalle's two boiling water reactors produces about 1,197 megawatts. Exelon Corporation (NYSE: EXC) is one of the nation's largest electric utilities with approximately 5.2 million customers and more than $15 billion in annual revenues. The company has one of the industry's largest portfolios of electricity generation capacity, with a nationwide reach and strong positions in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic. Exelon distributes electricity to approximately 5.2 million customers in northern Illinois and Pennsylvania and gas to more than 460,000 customers in the Philadelphia area. Exelon is headquartered in Chicago and trades on the NYSE under the ticker EXC. SOURCE Exelon Nuclear News Provided By |
