In a Monday event report, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said the Prairie Island Nuclear Power Plant in Red Wing, Minnesota, has proceeded with a planned outage of certain computer systems.
The plant’s Emergency Response Data System (ERDS) and its Safety Parameter Display System (SPDS) will be offline. Because this poses a risk if an incident were to occur, additional personnel will be stationed at the plant to manually monitor the equipment that is directly affected by the computer going offline.
The NRC said this falls within the plant’s procedures and will not impact public health and safety. The plant’s resident inspectors have been notified.
Any event that results in emergency assessment, off-site communication and response capability spurs a report, regardless of whether or not it is planned.
In a separate, previous incident, the plant shut down the second unit in early June due to an issue with oil pressure and a turbine trip.
The plant is owned by Xcel Energy and consists of two reactors that are capable of producing 550 megawatts each, enough to produce electricity for approximately a million homes.
