The Unit 3 nuclear reactor at Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan shut down at 7:20 p.m. Monday due to an electrical disturbance, according to a statement from the plant”™s owner and operator, Entergy Corp.
The reactor was back online Tuesday afternoon.
A spokesman for Entergy said in an email the electric generator “shut down automatically by design when it sensed a disturbance outside the plant in the switchyard” across the street, where power is sent before being distributed to the grid.
A Consolidated Edison spokesman said a breaker failure on Con Ed’s equipment caused Unit 3 to go offline.
This is the third time the Unit 3 reactor has been unexpectedly shut down in the last two months. The reactor was shut down twice in May, first when a steam leak was discovered in a pipe and then during a transformer failure and fire. Entergy said those incidents were not related.
Before that, Unit 3 had been taken offline in March for a scheduled refueling outage that takes place every other year for maintenance and inspections.
Indian Point”™s other active reactor, Unit 2, has been online continuously for 454 days.
Indian Point continues to prove its own irrelevance as a reliable source of electricity.
If I were caught driving my car without a license I’d be arrested, but Indian Point continues to operate without a license without any consequences to its owners, Entergy. It’s time to decommission these reactors.