Unit 2 at Cook’s nuclear power plant in Bridgman was shut down Sunday to fix two water pumps. Indiana Michigan Power says there’s no safety issue and the repairs are expected to be made soon. Bill Downey is Communications Manager at Cook.
“Early Sunday morning we had to take the unit offline after the operators noticed a gradual decline in performance of the unit’s two non-essential water service pumps.”
Downey says this is what happened, leading operators to take Cook’s Unit 2 temporarily offline.
“What happened is the pump’s strainers became fouled up. There was a increase in differential pressure that the operators noticed and realized that there was some lake debris of some sort that had gotten into these pump strainers.”
Downey says Cook Unit 2 is expected to be offline for days rather than weeks while the repairs are made. Power supply remains adequate, Downey says, and the incident will be fully investigated. He says the shutdown of Unit 2 Sunday was accomplished safely, unit 1 is operating at full power and there is no safety issue.
