The Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama briefly risked having to shut down all three of its reactors Tuesday when a system cooling electrical equipment rooms went offline.At about 4:30 p.m., two control bay chiller units malfunctioned, according to a report filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. One stopped working while in operation, and the second tripped while it was started to replace the first unit. This resulted in a lack of cooling for two shutdown board rooms that house electrical equipment affecting all three units. Without the cooling capacity, the plant's technical specifications called for the electrical equipment to be declared inoperable and for the reactors to be manually shut down.Together, the Tennessee Valley Authority's three General Electric Type 4 boiling water reactors at the site generate about 3,300 megawatts and represent about 10 percent of TVA's total generation capacity. At the time of the report to the NRC, the units had reduced power slightly. But crews were successful in bringing one of the chillers back online at 8:35 p.m., and two of the three reactors were back at full power by the following morning, with unit 2 operating at 94 percent power.
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