Browns Ferry Unit 1 restarted

ATHENS (AP) — The Unit 1 reactor at Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant has been restarted after its automatic shutdown last week — the fifth since June 2.

Workers at the Tennessee Valley Authority plant near Athens began returning the reactor to full power Wednesday.

The plant’s Unit 2 and 3 reactors were both operating at 100 percent. Unit 1 automatically shut down Oct. 12 because of a turbine problem. A reactor creates heat, which is used to make steam to power turbines that create the electricity.

The problem last week centered on a monitor that looks at the moisture of the steam going into a turbine, said TVA spokesman Jason Huffine. The monitor failed, which in turn caused the turbine to fail, which caused the reactor to fail, he said.

The monitor was fixed, Huffine said.

Unit 1 was restarted in May after a five-year, $1.8 billion project to repair and upgrade the reactor, which had been shut down with the other two in 1985 because of safety concerns. The Unit 2 and 3 reactors were returned to service in the 1990s after similar projects.

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