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Category Archives: Operating Reactors

Fort Calhoun – A Mixed Report Card

Leave a Comment Posted by on May 24, 2013
Lara Uselding
Public Affairs Officer, Region IV
 

nebraskaNRC inspectors held a public meeting in Omaha, Neb., on May 17, to share preliminary information from a recent restart readiness inspection at the Fort Calhoun Station, operated by the Omaha Public Power District (OPPD). The plant entered into the NRC’s increased oversight category in 2011 after it shut down for a refueling outage. The outage was extended due to historic Missouri River flooding followed by an electrical fire and other restart complications.

The meeting is one in a series we’re holding to keep the public informed. The 15-member team of inspectors looked at 169 out of more than 450 items that need to be resolved prior to the NRC making a decision on restart. The team recommended closing three of the 18 main categories known as the restart checklist. The three areas the team believes OPPD has appropriately addressed are third-party safety culture assessment, quality assurance, and integrated organizational effectiveness.

In essence, the plant’s officials have made improvements on some of the causes that led to the performance decline.

It’s important to note that as the team prepared for the inspection and began its review of the 169 items, they identified that 66 of those items were not fully ready for inspection as plant management stated. That means NRC inspectors were only able to fully inspect 60 percent of the original scope and will go back for a follow-up inspection.

While OPPD has made progress, there is still a lot of work to be done. The team found the plant hadn’t done a good job of evaluating whether a discovered condition exists in other areas of the plant and then implementing actions to address it. Because of this, the NRC has determined a number of restart checklist items are not ready for closure. In addition, NRC inspectors identified new performance deficiencies. Those preliminary findings still need to be evaluated by NRC management and results will be documented in the team’s inspection report. The report will be issued within 45 days.

The NRC will conduct follow-up inspections to look at the remaining open performance areas and to determine if plant personnel, equipment, and processes are ready to support the safe restart and continued safe operation. There will be additional public meetings in the local area before any decision about restart.

Operating Reactors , ,

Tracking the Source: Pilgrim’s Tritium Link

5 Comments Posted by on April 29, 2013
Neil Sheehan
Public Affairs Officer, Region I
 

pilgIt may not be as daunting as searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack, but the process of trying to track down the source of tritium contamination at the Pilgrim nuclear power plant has been long and painstaking.

Since mid-2010, efforts have been under way to determine why certain groundwater monitoring wells at the Plymouth, Mass., site have detected very low levels of tritium, a naturally occurring radioactive form of hydrogen that is also a byproduct of nuclear power plant electricity production.

While tritium emits a weak form of radiation, does not travel very far in air and cannot penetrate the skin, the release of the radioactive material via an uncontrolled pathway is unacceptable to the NRC.

There is still more checking to be done, but now there is a possibility a 4-inch underground pipe might be the culprit.

The NRC, from the time the contamination was identified, has continued to press the plant’s owner, Entergy, to hunt for the point of origin so that further leakage could be prevented. Work done to find the source included extensive visual inspections of tanks, and piping and dye tests to track groundwater flows at the facility.

Until recently, those efforts did not bear fruit.

However, water leakage into the reactor building that occurred in mid-April helped plant personnel focus on the pipe in question. This pipe is used infrequently during any given year, to allow for the discharge of water containing small amounts of radioactivity, which limited the opportunities to detect this break. Still, this pipe was due to be checked as part of a voluntary nuclear industry initiative to inspect underground pipes and tanks that has been under way for several years and that all plants have undertaken.

The NRC will independently verify whether the pipe is, in fact, to blame for the contamination. In the meantime, the pipe has been removed from service to prevent any additional leakage. An NRC inspection of the plant’s implementation of the voluntary industry initiative is scheduled for September.

It’s important to note that the tritium contamination has remained on-site. Since the groundwater there is not used for drinking-water purposes, there is believed to be no risk to plant employees or the public as a result of the contamination.

Operating Reactors , ,

Fort Calhoun: A Status Update

4 Comments Posted by on April 18, 2013
Lara Uselding
Public Affairs Officer, Region IV
 

fcsThe NRC held a public meeting with Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) on March 27 to discuss the status of the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant. The plant, just north of Omaha, Neb., has been shut down since April 9, 2011, for a refueling outage. The outage was extended due to historic flooding along the Missouri River followed by an electrical fire that led to an “Alert” declaration and further restart complications.

At the March meeting, NRC oversight panel members shared that a 15-member inspection team had been on site conducting a very thorough inspection and independent verification of the plant’s current status.

Based on the results of the team inspection activities, the NRC has found there are a number of potential issues that appear to need licensing actions. The NRC has scheduled a meeting with OPPD officials on April 22 to discuss four changes the licensee made to the plant that may have required prior NRC approval.

The first involves a change made to the plant’s water intake structure, which was discussed in a recently issued report. Secondly, OPPD used a method to evaluate systems, structures and components for seismic conditions that was not part of their licensing basis. Thirdly, they changed the method for analyzing the suitability of piping systems without approval. Lastly, some plant equipment may not be adequately protected from tornado-driven projectiles.

The meeting to discuss these issues is open to the public and details about the meeting can be found here. The public is encouraged to contact the project managers to obtain meeting materials prior to the meeting and to ensure they plan for the appropriate number of bridge lines.

A second meeting also is scheduled between NRC and OPPD on April 22. That meeting, to discuss the ongoing review of flood mitigation activities, is closed to the public due to sensitive security information being discussed.

Operating Reactors , ,

NRC Sends Additional Inspectors to Oversee Perry’s Refueling Outage

4 Comments Posted by on April 10, 2013
Viktoria Mitlying
Senior Public Affairs Officer
Region III
 

perrA refueling outage is a time when the number of workers at the plant soars from 700 to about 2,000 — with most working in highly radioactive areas of the plant not accessible during normal plant operation.

The NRC has sent four additional inspectors – in addition to the two Resident Inspectors – to the Perry Nuclear Plant in Ohio to watch and evaluate how the plant is ensuring the safety of these workers.

Sending these extra inspectors to monitor outage activities reflects the measure of our concern with Perry’s occupational radiation safety program – which is supposed to make sure workers don’t get exposed to unnecessary levels of radiation. The plant is under increased NRC oversight because of deficiencies in this program. Even though these issues have not resulted in any overexposures to workers, we want to make sure the plant fixes the weaknesses in this vital area.

To be clear, there are no problems with the plant’s program to protect the public from radiation.

In June, we will conduct a thorough inspection to determine if plant owner FENOC has understood the extent of the weaknesses in occupational radiation safety at Perry and has taken what we call “sufficient and sustainable actions” to fix the problems and prevent them from happening again.

This refueling outage is a great opportunity for our inspectors to see with their own eyes how the plant is handling the most hectic time for the site with the largest number of people working in most highly radioactive places in the plant.

Specifically, our inspectors are looking at whether the plant’s radiation protection department is accurately assessing the radiological conditions in high radiation areas and adequately preparing the workers for these conditions. They are evaluating the quality of the plant’s radiation safety procedures; the effectiveness of workers’ radiation safety training and the workers’ adherence to procedures.

Inspectors are also assessing if plant workers across the board, not just radiation protection personnel, are adhering to radiation safety practices.

Our observations and assessments from the current refueling outage plus the follow-up inspection in June will help us determine if the plant has resolved the deficiencies in occupational radiation safety. If not, the plant will start receiving the highest level of NRC oversight for an operating plant.

Operating Reactors , ,

Easter Sunday and Arkansas Nuclear One

59 Comments Posted by on April 1, 2013
Victor Dricks
Senior Public Affairs Officer, Region IV
 

As the eyes and ears of the NRC, resident inspectors never know when they might have to respond to an emergency at the plants anothey monitor. Fred Sanchez, Arkansas Nuclear One Senior Resident Inspector, was preparing to attend Easter services with his family when he got a call shortly before 8 a.m. Sunday informing him that a 600-ton component was dropped from a crane while being moved out of the turbine building at Unit 1.

He drove to the plant to survey the damage and phoned reports back to Region IV staff all day.

The industrial accident resulted in eight injuries and one fatality. Of the injured workers, six were treated and released from a local hospital; two remain hospitalized.

At the time of the event, Unit 1 was in a refueling outage with all of the fuel still in the reactor vessel, safely cooled. The accident damaged some electrical equipment that supplies off-site power to the plant. The plant’s emergency diesel generators started and power was quickly restored to the decay heat removal systems.

Unit 2, which was operating at full power, automatically shut down when power was lost to a reactor coolant pump due to electrical equipment that was damaged when the component fell. At 9:22 a.m. offsite power to one electrical bus was lost because water from a fire main broken by the falling component caused a short circuit. An emergency diesel generator started up and is supplying power to key safety systems. Unit 2 is cooling down using natural circulation.

Both plants are in stable shutdown condition. There was no radiological release or danger to the public.

Entergy Operations, Inc., which operates the plant, declared a Notice of Unusual Event, the lowest of four NRC emergency classifications, at 10:44 a.m. because the accident damaged some electrical equipment. The Unusual Event was terminated at 6:21 p.m. after the licensee took corrective actions to stabilize the plant’s power supplies.

Two additional inspectors have been dispatched to ANO to assist the resident inspectors and conduct follow-up reviews of the licensee’s response to the event. NRC’s Region IV also plans to conduct an inspection to review the circumstances contributing to the event.

Emergency Preparedness and Response, Operating Reactors , ,

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