Tornado Damage Forces Virginia Nuclear Plant Shutdown
Posted by feww on April 20, 2011
Tornado-damaged Surry Nuclear Power Plant Forced to Shut Down
A weekend tornado reportedly damaged the switchyard at Dominion’s Surry Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) forcing both aging reactor units to shut down.
The power station is located near James River in SE Virginia across from Jamestown, and upriver from Smithfield and Newport News.
The NPP is operated by Dominion Generation and owned by Dominion Resources, Inc. The damage disabled the power to the plant’s cooling pumps and forced the two aging units (commissioned in 1972 and 73) to shut down.
The plant has a total nameplate capacity of about 1,600MW.
On December 9, 1986 four technicians were killed when a steam explosion destroyed parts of a “non-nuclear” section in the plant’s Reactor 2 building.
U.S. Map of Nuclear Power Plants. Approximate locations of the 3 NPPs cited in this report are marked by FIRE-EARTH. Click map to enlarge.
Crystal River nuclear power plant in Florida
“Earlier this month, new containment wall damage was discovered at Progress Energy’s 838-MW Crystal River nuclear plant in Florida, extending the unit’s 18-month outage indefinitely.” The report said.
Commissioned in 1977, the 914 megawatts pressurized water reactor is located in Crystal River, Florida.
Brunswick NPP, Southport, NC
Progress Energy has also shut down its 920-MW Brunswick 2 nuclear reactor (commissioned in 1975) in North Carolina yesterday, as it was returning from a refueling outage, the report said.
This post will be updated with additional information added, throughout the day.
Fire Earth 
feww said
Cracks found in South Carolina atomic station’s nuclear reactor head
http://rt.com/usa/news/cracks-atomic-reactor-head-797/