PLYMOUTH – The Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station has reconnected to the grid after its unplanned shutdown during last week’s winter storm.
The plant went back online Wednesday night after a fault in an offsite transmission line on January 4 forced operators to manually shut down the reactor.
“Pilgrim Station reconnected to the grid yesterday evening (Wednesday, January 10) at 6:23 p.m., restoring generation after last week’s winter storm damaged an offsite transmission line owned by Eversource,” said Pilgrim Spokesman Patrick O’Brien. “Station operators had shut down Pilgrim on January 4 following the loss of one of the two offsite 345-kilovolt Eversource-owned transmission lines to which the plant feeds its power. The line fault occurred approximately 25 miles away from Pilgrim Station. As a conservative measure, per Pilgrim procedure, when one 345kv line is lost during a storm, operators manually shut down the reactor.”
O’Brien said station staff performed maintenance while the station was offline.
This was the third storm-related unplanned shutdown for Pilgrim since 2013. The station is under the highest level of federal oversight due to a series of safety problems and the unplanned shutdowns in 2013 and 2015.
The plant is one step away from a federally-mandated shutdown order.
Pilgrim is scheduled to close in 2019.