Fire at a generator of a power plant

The incident occurred at the hydrogen coolant circuit, when purging the hydrogen with carbon dioxide and air, aiming at finding a leak.

Following a preliminary investigation, the power plant company explained that hydrogen was still present when air was injected, creating the condition for the formation of an explosive mixture.

The INITIATING cause of he explosion seems to be the erroneous injection of air into the hydrogen lines. Acording to the sources, it appears also that this occurred by deviating from the prescribed procedure. If confirmed, the root cause could be related to a human error or errors during the communication of the instructions

hydrogen cooling system, turbine, generator

The plant is a new coal-fired power station, and its construction was still on going.
Its nominal power, when completed, was 4.8GW.
At the moment of the incident, only few units were already in function. The unit affected, of approximately 800 MW, was on a short-term outage. The incident occurred while looking for leak in the hydrogen coolant circuit.

No injuries have been reported. Emergency services attended to seven workers requiring treatment for shock