Fire at the storage of a power plant

At a nuclear power plant, a fire occurred in the station's hydrogen storage facility while the plant was operating at 100% power.
The fire was reported to the control room by a non-licensed operator who saw the fire start after he had aligned valves at the hydrogen storage facility in preparation for putting the hydrogen injection system into service.
The operator escaped injury because he was wearing fire retardant protective clothing and was able to quickly scale a 7 foot high fence enclosing the hydrogen area.

The licensee identified the lack of effective maintenance as a root cause of the hydrogen fire event at JAF.
INITIATING cause was the failure of three valves failed, starting the fire. According to the root cause evaluation, all of the failures were due to an inadequate preventive maintenance program by the hydrogen system vendor and inadequate system monitoring and management oversight by JAF.

hydrogen storage area

Plant was operating at 100% power.
A non-licensed operator had aligned valves at the hydrogen storage facility in preparation for putting the hydrogen injection system into service.

The incident did not require the JAF plant to be shut down at any point and there was only one small injury to an employee.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued the information notice 2001-12 to alert addressees to potential hazards associated with hydrogen storage facilities.
It is expected that recipients will review the information for applicability to their facilities and consider appropriate actions to avoid similar problems.
However, suggestions contained in this information notice are not NRC requirements; therefore, no specific action or written response is required.

The licensee identified the root cause as organizational and programmatic deficiencies that resulted in multiple component failures. The hydrogen control panel and associated equipment are vendor supplied and maintained.
The licensee determined that the vendor maintenance program and JAF oversight of that program were inadequate. In addition, JAF had identified recurring problems with the system that had not been effectively resolved.

More in general, the NRC report concluded that this event demonstrated that "lack of adequate maintenance, system monitoring and oversight of maintenance can contribute to the ignition of a fire which is difficult to extinguish and poses an extreme danger to fire fighting personnel. Properly maintaining, monitoring and overseeing of hydrogen storage facility equipment can minimize the risk of fire or explosion".