A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructures, Sona Harutiunian, said the lightning caused the plant’s automated security systems to bring its reactor to a “safe stop mode.”
“Security systems are highly sensitive and responsive to any situation,” Harutiunian wrote on Facebook shortly after midnight. “At the moment, the [Metsamor] staff is busy with relaunching the station.”
“This is another proof that the large-scale modernization work carried out in recent years, including in the security systems, has been effective and produced the expected result,” she added in an apparent effort to allay possible fears about the safety of the Soviet-era facility located about 40 kilometers west of Yerevan.
In her words, Metsamor was brought to a halt at around 10 p.m. local time. There was a thunderstorm in Yerevan and surrounding areas at that time. The stoppage reportedly caused brief power cuts in some of those areas as well as parts of the Armenian capital.
Metsamor’s sole functioning reactor, which generates roughly 40 percent of Armenia’s electricity, went into service in 1980 and was originally due to be decommissioned in 2017. The country’s former government extended the 420-megawatt reactor’s operations by ten years, until 2026, despite Western concerns about its safety.
The current Armenian government has approved another ten-year extension. It has pledged to build a new reactor at Metsamor by 2036.