The smoke was noted by one of the workers during his walkdown, who cooled the equipment down using a hand extinguisher. Within minutes, firefighters of the plant arrived on the spot, who had just carried out an inspection using thermovision. That it was not a fire was confirmed by the summoned investigator of the South Bohemian Region Fire and Rescue Corps.

Preliminarily detected cause was a short circuit in the device developing steam to humidify the air in the collecting device of the generator. In order to confirm the cause, the remaining three steam generating devices were also shutdown preventively. The event is preliminary assessed off the INES scale since it has no impact on the power plant operation or on the nuclear safety.

The State Office for Nuclear Safety was informed about the event. In accordance with the agreement of the Melk, the Office passed the information to Austria. Austria was also informed by the plant operator.

The last time, the Temelín firefighter intervened in May of this year. This was due to a technical fault of an electric hand dryer in the medical staff toilet. Since 2007, it's only the fifth intervention of the Temelín fire brigade within the power plant site. In all cases, the interventions got along without injuries and any impact on operations and nuclear safety.

Ing. Marek Sviták
Spokesperson of Temelín NPP