Chennai, April 15 (IANS) A unit of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd’s (NPCIL) Madras Atomic Power Station (MAPS) tripped Monday morning due to a fault in the generator transformer and the reactor was shut down gradually, said a senior official.
“The second unit was restarted Sunday after a 40-day maintenance shutdown. Monday morning, when the unit was operating at 110 MW, the unit tripped due to a fault in the generator transformer high voltage bushing and the reactor was shut down,” T.J. Kotteeswaran, station director at MAPS told IANS over phone from Kalpakkam, around 70 km from here.
He said that due to the transformer failure, the reactor turbine stopped and the reactor was gradually shut down following the due procedure.
“The cause of the transformer failure is being investigated. We did not find any sudden surge in power from the reactor,” Kotteeswaran added.
MAPS has two reactors of 220 MW each, but they have been functioning below their rated capacity owing to paucity of fuel.
According to Kotteeswaran, the first unit is operating normally, feeding 170 MW to the grid.
In August 2012, two reactors at MAPS shut down automatically after a critical component (breaker) in the 230 KV switchyard tripped, resulting in power supply failure to the reactors.
Both reactors shut down their operations and restarted couple of days later.
