Ameren Nuclear Plant Accident Injures Three in Missouri

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-03/ameren-nuclear-plant-accident-injures-three-in-missouri.html


Ameren Nuclear Plant Accident Injures Three in Missouri

By Mark Chediak and Julie Johnsson - Apr 3, 2013

Ameren Corp. (AEE), owner of Missouri’s biggest utility, said three people were injured yesterday at its nuclear power plant. It was the second worker accident at a U.S. atomic facility this week.

The accident involved an “electrical flash” in the switch-yard area of Ameren’s Callaway Energy Center at 5:06 p.m. local time, the St. Louis-based company said in an e-mailed statement today. The 1,900-megawatt plant wasn’t affected by the accident and continues to operate, Ameren said.

The three injured workers were transported to local hospitals, Ameren said. An emergency call reported burn victims, including two with burns to their faces, Callaway County Emergency Management Director Michelle Kidwell said in a telephone interview.

Ameren didn’t provide additional details about the victims out of respect for their privacy, according to the statement. The company is investigating the cause of the accident at the plant about 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of St. Louis.

The event comes after one worker was killed and eight injured in a March 31 accident at Entergy Corp. (ETR)’s Arkansas Nuclear One plant about 65 miles northwest of Little Rock. A crane accidentally dropped a 500-ton generator component that was being moved out of the turbine building at unit 1, which was shut down for a refueling outage, Victor Dricks, spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in an April 1 blog post.

The plant’s other reactor, which was operating at full power at the time of the accident, tripped offline after the accident damaged electrical equipment and caused a reactor coolant pump to lose power, Dricks wrote. An emergency diesel generator is supplying power to key safety systems.

To contact the reporters on this story: Mark Chediak in San Francisco at mchediak@bloomberg.net; Julie Johnsson in Chicago at jjohnsson@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Susan Warren at susanwarren@bloomberg.net

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