Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station went back online Wednesday evening after a 345-kilovolt Eversource transmission line went down last Thursday during a powerful winter storm, triggering a precautionary shutdown.
“The line fault occurred approximately 25 miles away from Pilgrim Station,” Entergy spokesman Patrick O’Brien stated in a press release. “As a conservative measure, per Pilgrim procedure, when one 345-KV line is lost during a storm, operators manually shut down the reactor.”
Station workers used the unanticipated downtime to perform maintenance that can’t be done while the plant is online. “This work is done to enhance equipment reliability for the remainder of the plant’s operating cycle, which concludes May 31, 2019,” Mr. O’Brien stated. “Before coming offline last week, Pilgrim had run for 227 consecutive days.”
