<article><p class="lead">South Korea's 650MW Kori 2 reactor, owned by state-owned Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power, was automatically taken off line today, according to the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC).</p><p>The reactor went off line at 10:43 local time after a mobile crane passed too close to the transmission line and caused a 'flashover', according to NSSC's incident report. </p><p>A flashover is an undesired high-voltage electrical discharge over the surface of an insulator.</p><p>It is unclear when the outage will end, but the reactor is expected to resume operations shortly because there was no impact on safety.</p><p>If the reactor remains out of action until the end of this month, the outage is expected to reduce April's nuclear availability to 17.15GW from the previously scheduled 17.26GW. </p><p class="bylines">By Evelyn Lee</p></article>
