Situation back to normal at Russia's Smolensk NPP after incident

Source: BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union - Political

Publication date: Feb 17, 2000

Text of report by Russian news agency RIA on 17th February

Moscow, 17th February: The radiation situation at the SmolenskNuclear Power Plant and in the monitored zone has not changed.Safe-operation limits have not been violated either, [Russiannuclear industry company] Rosenergoatom's press service told RIAtoday.

It was reported earlier that there was a fire at the plant on Wednesday [16th February], caused by a fault in a turbine. The plant's third power generator was switched off, its output was cut by half and the consequences eliminated.

The press service said that events like this do not even register on the international nuclear incident scale. Also, all power generators at Russian NPPs have multi-level protection system, which is set off by any malfunction.

The Smolensk NPP is located 3 km from Desnogorsk, Smolensk Region, on the shores of an artificial water reservoir. It has three power generators with a total capacity of 3,000 M. Last year the plant generated 19,809bn kWh of electricity, compared with a planned 18,883bn kWh. Since the start of this year the plant has produced 3.071m kWh, the press service said.

Publication date: Feb 17, 2000 ) 2000, NewsReal, Inc.

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-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 17, 2000