FILE - In this March 16, 2011 photo, steam escapes from Exelon Corp.'s nuclear plant in Byron, Ill. A nuclear reactor the plant shut down Monday, Jan. 30, 2012 after losing power, and steam was being vented to reduce pressure, according to officials from Exelon Nuclear and federal regulators. (AP Photo/Robert Ray, File)
CHICAGO - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is launching a special inspection into how some equipment responded to a power failure at a northern Illinois nuclear reactor.
NRC spokeswoman Viktoria Mitlyng says some water pumps at the Byron Generating Station switched off when the Unit 2 reactor lost power Monday, then came back on without being manually reset.
She says the pumps are designed to switch off after a set amount of time if there is an undervoltage, but normally must be reset.
She says there was no danger because the plant about 95 miles northwest of Chicago has multiple backup pumps, but the NRC wants all pumps to perform properly.
Exelon Energy officials say they've replaced a faulty electricity insulator at the plant that was responsible for the outage.
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