Conditional situation — real staff actions

At Shaturskaya GRES branch of Unipro PJSC, a plant-wide emergency and firefighting drills were held.

The purpose of the drills was to check the readiness of the operating staff to respond to emergencies, practice the interface between the Power Plant workshops and Fire Safety Centre LLC as well as control over employee’s activities to assess the damage upon completion of emergency response activities, and prepare for repair and recovery operations.

According to the drill scenario, a short circuit occurs on the 0.4 kV supply cable of the circulating pump 6A electric motor, laid in the cable section of Power Unit No. 6.  A fire breaks out. Circulating pump 6A of Power Unit No. 6 is tripped by the automatic protection. The emergency situation is detected by the operating personnel. For safe suppression of the fire at the equipment, the Power Unit No. 6 must be immediately disconnected from the network.

The information is immediately reported to the Fire Safety Centre LLC and the Power Plant shift supervisor. The latter, in turn, informs the GRES management. At the same time the loudspeaker sounds the request to the station workers to leave the dangerous place. After the fire team arrives and is admitted to fight the fire, the fire is suppressed.

In the course of the drills, the emergency situation at Power Unit No. 7 (CCGT-400) was also simulated. According to the drill plan, the operating staff detects a failure (loss of vacuum). After checking the technical water supply system, it becomes clear that the water treatment screens on the VOM-7A water treatment facility are clogged with lake trash. As a consequence, the water level in the intake chamber has dropped. For the duration of the repair, the power engineers decided to turn on the second vacuum pump to maintain a minimum service load. After cleaning the screens of the PTO-7A, filling the intake chamber and turning on the pump, the Power Unit is switched to the normal operating mode.

All actions are reported to higher operating personnel, Plant management, and various higher authorities, according to the applicable instructions.

More than 60 people and two units of special equipment took part in the station-wide drills. All tasks according to the plan were successfully completed. The Power Plant management acknowledged the high level of readiness and coordinated work of the participants and positively assessed the actions of the branch operating personnel and Fire Safety Center LLC employees.