by Iafrica

Nuclear power trip

"Eskom engineers are hard at work trying to establish the reason for Koeberg nuclear power station's unit two suddenly shutting down on Thursday afternoon. Unit two's automatic protection mechanism tripped around 2.40pm, shutting the unit down and taking it off line, Eskom spokesperson Fani Zulu said. The cause had not yet been established and was being investigated, he said. This meant both units at the power station were now off line. Unit one was shut down on 26 January for long-term planned maintenance and was expected to come back on line early in May. Zulu said there was "some degree of comfort on our part that we can survive" this unplanned shutdown of unit two without interruptions in the power supply to the Cape"

more