Entergy's Indian Point 2 - Back Online Next Week

BUCHANAN — Indian Point 2 should be back online by the end of next week, officials from the nuclear power plant said today.

Indian Point 2 went offline starting about 4:30 a.m. Tuesday after a car-sized water pump failed and triggered the shutdown of the reactor. The pump handles 360,000 gallons of water per minute from four feeder pipes.

The company had been monitoring the overflow of the pump for more than a week. When it hit a 5-gallon-per-minute threshold, workers shut down the reactor.

Engineers had to wait more than a day for the 1,028-megawatt reactor, which operates at about 550 degrees Fahrenheit, to cool enough to even assess the damage. The examination showed no surprises, Indian Point spokesman Jerry Nappi.

The Indian Point 2 and Indian Point 3 reactors provide enough electricity for 2 million homes, about a quarter of the metro region’s total power.

Indian Point 3’s production of electricity remains unaffected, company officials said, and state grid managers saw no impact of the short-term shutdown on electricity supply or prices.

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