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AP: Why was smoke seen at Illinois nuke plant, but no fire?

Published: January 31st, 2012 at 11:58 am ET
By ENENews
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Title: Officials investigating Illinois reactor shutdown
Source: AP
Date: Monday, 01.30.12

[...] One question is why smoke was seen from an onsite station transformer, though no evidence of a fire was found when the plant’s fire brigade responded, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman Viktoria Mitlyng said.

Exelon Nuclear officials believe a failed piece of equipment at a switchyard at the plant about 95 miles northwest of Chicago caused the shutdown, but they were still investigating an exact cause. The switchyard is similar to a large substation that delivers power to the plant from the electrical grid and from the plant to the electrical grid. [...]

Read the report here

Title: Exelon’s Byron 2 Reactor in Illinois Shuts Down, NRC Says
Source: Bloomberg
Date: Jan. 30

“There were reports of smoke around the transformer, but they found there was no fire,” Victoria Mitlyng, an agency spokeswoman based in Chicago, said in a telephone interview.

Read the report here

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Published: January 31st, 2012 at 11:58 am ET
By ENENews
Email Article Email Article
11 comments





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  1. Nuke Plant Spokeswoman: “Smoke was seen coming from an auxiliary transformer but the fire department found no fire” -Reuters January 30, 2012
  2. NRC: “Not a huge concern” at nuke plant outside Chicago — Employees reported seeing smoke coming from transformer after outage, no fire found January 30, 2012
  3. UPDATED: Emergency shutdown at Illinois reactor — Smoke was actually steam containing radioactive material — Workers evacuated — Releases will continue throughout day (PHOTO) January 30, 2012
  4. Fireman Eyewitness: “It looked like a lot of smoke coming from containment building” at Byron nuclear plant — Had to be told it was steam — Original call said a building at Byron nuclear plant was filling up with smoke (VIDEO) January 30, 2012
  5. State of Wisconsin issues statement on nuclear “incident” in Illinois — Currently monitoring conditions after plant lost power and went offline January 30, 2012
January 31st, 2012 | Category: Midwest
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11 comments to AP: Why was smoke seen at Illinois nuke plant, but no fire?

  • bmurr bmurr
    January 31, 2012 at 12:36 pm

    Smoke is black, steam is white. Steam comes from water being sprayed on hot transformers. There are plenty of examples of sub station fires on youtube.

  • midwestern midwestern
    January 31, 2012 at 12:49 pm

    Link to Nuclear Energy Information Service:
    http://neis.org/

    One of few anti-nuclear activist groups in Illinois. Chicago-based.

  • bincbom
    January 31, 2012 at 2:32 pm

    Interesting that there is no redundancy to the offsite power. One switchyard problem is all it took to create this mess.. wow!

  • hbjon hbjon
    January 31, 2012 at 2:49 pm

    Don’t look over there on the other side of the planet. Here, look at this bright, shiny object here in Illinois. A npp with steam coming out of it. OMG. Everyone panic now. Radiation is a blanket term that is way too overused. Transuranic elements exposed to the elements is really bad. Uranium exposed to the elements is really bad. Gamma emmitters are really bad in high doses. Alpha emmitters will work their way internally if exposed to the air, which is really bad. Beta emmitters can be really bad when they accumulate inside your body. I think what happened in Illinois is that the control rods were inserted into the cores and a massive influx of coolant was exposed to the hot cores and to control pressure the steam was vented. Does steam get irradiated as it passes the core? Yes. But it gets radiated by the gamma rays, not Alpha or Beta radiation. If fuel rods are damaged however, then the coolant will get contaminated. AFAIK.

    • AGreenRoad AGreenRoad
      January 31, 2012 at 3:05 pm

      That is a bunch of assumptions… all of them very positive. For everyone in Chicago’s sake I hope they are all true.

      What if those positive things did not happen? Every meltdown was always covered up first thing, often for DAYS.

      What if the power failed, the pumps did not kick on, and the water levels dropped, even with controls rods dropped into the reactor(s)? What if the reactor core partially melted down as in the case of TMI?

      They say the generators kicked in, but is that really the case? No one heard or saw them. Reporters were not given access to that part of the plant. If they did turn on, how long can they keep it up, before they fail or break? All I hear on the news is the roar of a massive amount of steam being released from what looks like a reactor building.

      I saw one report that that said the employees were evacuated from the plant.. Was this just a rumor, or are they covering up something?

      If things are so safe, why no radiation meters and showing those readings to the public? A local nuclear group cannot get any readings from anything, even though the plant is supposedly surrounded by a ring of radiation meters… They are NOT releasing this information…

      All by itself, that makes me tend towards the more negative impression and leads me to the coverup diagnosis.

      • bmurr bmurr
        January 31, 2012 at 3:48 pm

        Uhg.. One thing you said makes me worry every time this kind of thing happens. They always lie for days… Its so true about every major release, every single time it happened in the past it was preceded by days of missleading information or out right lies.

        • GoFrodo
          January 31, 2012 at 9:05 pm

          Yes, we can bet it will be much worse than they say. We just went through this too many times. What do they say, “Fool me once….”

          Do we even know what’s going on at the Fort Calhoun and Hanford plants?

          After a while, all the small releases start to add up. What a way to not give us a chance to survive. :|

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