More Loony Tunes at Salem/Hope Creek

Sept 11: LOWER ALLOWAYS CREEK TWP. — The Hope Creek nuclear reactor has returned to service after being shut down for repairs to a key safety relief valve, officials said.
The plant began sending out electricity over the regional power grid at 12:26 a.m. Thursday, according to Joe Delmar, spokesman for the plant's operator, PSEG Nuclear.
"The maintenance outage was well executed and we were able to make the repairs we needed to ensure the continued safe operation of Hope Creek," Delmar said.

Hope it is not a primary coolant pump or other broken large reactor component. I doubt it is not a loose safety relief valve...they would know if was was leaking through detectors.

Mystery noise shuts Hope Creek reactor

Mystery noise inside PSEG Nuclear's Hope Creek nuclear plant containment building prompted a shutdown of the 1,219 megawatt operation Friday, federal regulators reported Monday.

"Plant personnel believed the source of the noise was a faulty safety relief valve, but they have not been able to confirm that thus far," said Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's regional office in King of Prussia, Pa.

Joseph Delmar Sr., PSEG spokesman, described the shutdown as a maintenance outage, and said that the company could not say when the reactor would return to service.

Delmar said that the company had planned to replace one of the plant's many safety relief valves designed to keep the reactor's piping and systems from from exceeding pressure limits.

Repairs to leaks in the plant's cooling water system also are planned during the shutdown, officials said.

A quarterly inspection report released by the NRC in late July noted that 5 of 14 main steam safety relief valves at Hope Creek had failed to open within a specified pressure range, but did open and would have protected the plant from over-pressurization. PSEG made repairs and attributed the problem to "corrosion bonding/sticking" and said that it planned to install new valves with a different design.

The reactor's next regular refueling shutdown is scheduled for the Spring of 2015. Commercial operation of the reactor began in 1986.

Neither of the PSEG-operated, 1,180-megawatt Salem reactors, partly owned by Exelon Corp., were affected and continued operating at full power.