RED WING, Minn. – Both nuclear generators at the Prairie Island nuclear station were out of operation for months after a crew mistakenly cut an underground cable last year, it has been learned. There were no injuries or radioactive leakage. The massive Prairie Island nuclear facility sits on the Mississippi River upstream eight miles from Red Wing. A spokesperson for Xcel Energy, which operates the plant, confirmed the incident, which occured in October. When the cable was severed, said Theo Keith, the plant’s Unit 1 took “itself offline, as it is designed to do.” Unit 2 already had been offline since May for scheduled refueling. Not until January was Unit 1 restarted. Unit 2 returned to service in March. Over those months there was no power generated. Xcel had to buy power from other sources for an estimated $38 million. No Xcel customers were ever without power, Keith said. Costs of repair and getting the units up and going again were estimated as high as $12 million.
