Nuclear plant near Hong Kong hit by third operational incident this year
Event at Ling Ao power station classified as level 0, but engineer says fact nothing serious happened was pure luck
A nuclear power plant located just a stone’s throw from Hong Kong has been hit by its third minor operational incident this year – this time involving a faulty alarm system, officials disclosed.
Staff at the Ling Ao Nuclear Power Station in Shenzhen discovered on Tuesday that the alarm function for the cooling water system radiation monitoring device failed to display after being previously disabled and not restored. The incident took place at the plant’s Phase II’s unit one.
Reporting on the matter as required, the Security Bureau said plant staff had immediately restored the function, and that the glitch had not affected workers and other equipment at the station. Radiation levels in the plant cooling water during the period it had been disabled were also normal, it added.
“Further investigation revealed that the alarm function was disabled in the previous planned outage in compliance with the necessary plant criteria, but was not duly restored,” a bureau spokesman said.
The event was classified as a “below scale” , or level 0, “licensing operational event”, meaning there was no effect on the safe operation of the nuclear power station, health of the workers or nearby public or environment.