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Prairie Island's Unit 2 Is Up And Running

RED WING, Minn. (AP) -- Unit Two of the Prairie Island nuclear plant near Red Wing is up and running again after a storm on Monday triggered its shutdown.

Xcel Energy says the storm created a disturbance on the transmission grid, which resulted in the generator going offline and the reactor shutting down to prevent the power systems from being damaged.

The company says the shutdown went as planned, and didn't result in any injuries or release of radioactive material.

Prairie Island's Unit One had already been shut down for a planned refueling outage that began April 29.

Operators are gradually increasing power until Unit Two is back to normal.

Each of the reactor units provides about 550 megawatts of power.

(© Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

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