On Wednesday, December 26, 2007, at approximately 15:22
MST, a fire occurred in a fan shroud for Palo Verde Nuclear Generation Station Unit 3
cooling tower number 3. The fire was knocked down by the on site fire department using the fire truck water cannon. Smoldering continued between fan shroud segments.
Offsite assistance was requested in the event a pumper truck was needed due to the elevation of the cooling tower fan area. While the pumper truck was not needed, offsite personnel did assist in getting a fire hose to the top of the cooling tower.
No press release is planned, but media attention has already been observed in response to media monitoring communications on local police/fire scanners.
Palo Verde Unit 3 is shutdown and in Mode 5 in its thirteenth refueling outage. The cause of the fire is under investigation. Maintenance activities were in progress on the cooling tower at the time of the fire. The fire was completely extinguished at 16:45 hours and no emergency plan classification was declared or required as a result of the fire. The cooling towers are located on the owner control area outside of the protected area.
The NRC Resident Inspector has been notified of the event and this
ENS informational notification.
