Workers extinguished a small fire in the turbine hall of Entergy's Pilgrim nuclear plant Monday, interrupting its startup following a refueling outage.At about 4 a.m., workers detected a fire in an auxiliary oil pump motor, and the on-site fire brigade put it out with a fire extinguisher, according to a report filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. At the time, operators had just started powering up the single-unit plant. The reactor had reached criticality and the coolant system water was about 180 F when the startup was aborted, according to the report.A tripped breaker alerted the local fire department, the Patriot Ledger reported Tuesday, although the fire was out when off-site firefighters arrived.No emergency was declared. While Entergy has not provided further details on the incident, the company told the NRC the fire was confined to the motor in the turbine building lubricating oil room. The plant near Boston is a General Electric boiling water reactor first licensed in 1972, according to the NRC.
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