Calvert Cliffs plant's Unit 2 taken offline over faulty pump

Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Plant workers shut down the Unit 2 reactor on Tuesday after a pump problem was discovered, plant owner Exelon said.

Officials cited a faulty steam generator feed pump, which is responsible for powering the turbine. The reactor will be offline until repairs and testing are completed.

Exelon said Unit 1 is still working at full capacity with no issues or outages at of Tuesday.

Currently, technicians are evaluating and carrying out repairs, and no injuries or other issues have been reported in relation to this occurrence.

The Calvert Cliffs facility is located on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay, near Lusby, Maryland, and is currently Maryland's sole operating nuclear plant. At full capacity, the two-reactor facility is capable of producing up to 1,768 megawatts of electricity.

The Baltimore Sun reported in April that both reactors at the Calvert Cliffs facility had automatically shut down due to an off-site power-grid failure. An emergency generator automatically started running, but failed after 11 seconds. In addition, a saltwater pump had to be restarted manually when it failed to restart on its own after emergency power was established.
 The newspaper report said this same diesel generator failed to kick on altogether in 2010 after a similar off-site power outage.