Power outage interrupts work at Livermore Lab

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Aug 30, 2007

LIVERMORE -- A power outage caused by a small transformer failure affected 107 buildings and trailers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on Wednesday morning, prompting declaration of an "operational emergency." The failure occurred at 7:30 a.m. Backup generators immediately provided power to 22 facilities, including the plutonium facility known as Superblock.

Power restoration began around noon and was completed about 1:30 p.m. Computer systems were brought back online more slowly, but work was expected to have been finished by the end of the day. No injuries were reported.

Lab spokesman Don Johnston said the failure apparently was caused by an overheated "electrical subcomponent" in the transformer, and it's unclear what caused that component to malfunction.

Johnston said an outage of this scale hasn't occurred at the lab for at least the dozen years he has been employed there. Employees at the 107 affected buildings were released from work for the day. Work at facilities not affected continued as normal.