Nuclear reactor in US state shuts down abruptly

ATLANTA: A nuclear reactor at Plant Vogtle in eastern Georgia has been taken out of service until authorities determine why it unexpectedly shut down.The Atlanta-based Southern Co. reported Thursday that the Unit 1 reactor at Plant Vogtle automatically shut down Wednesday evening. Officials say the shutdown procedure, called a scram, was completed without incident.Nuclear reactors are designed to shut down if automatic monitoring systems detect conditions that could be unsafe.Southern Co. spokesman Alyson Fuqua said it is not immediately clear what prompted the shutdown. No problems have been reported.Fuqua said the shutdown was triggered by equipment related to an electrical turbine. The company was not certain when the reactor would start producing power again.Alarm had been raised over the safety of nuclear plants worldwide as Japan struggles to contain radiation spewing out of its Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, which had been severely damaged by the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and ensuing tsunami that hit northern Japan on March 11.The crisis is emerging as the world’s most expensive natural disaster on record, likely to cost up to $309 billion, according to a new government estimate. Police say an estimated 18,000 people were killed.Last month, Slovenia’s only nuclear power plant shut down automatically due to what plant officials said was a minor incident that triggered no radiation fallout.United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and others portrayed the growth of nuclear power plants as inevitable in an energy-hungry world as they spoke at a Kiev conference commemorating the explosion of a reactor at Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear reactor 25 years ago.The Chernobyl explosion on April 26, 1986, spewed a cloud of radioactive fallout over much of Europe and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes in the most heavily hit areas. A 30-kilometer area radiating from the plant remains uninhabited except for some plant workers who rotate in and several hundred local people who returned to their homes despite official warnings.