Tag: Indian Point nuclear power plant

Projected End Date for Indian Point Plant Comes into Clearer Focus

Neil Sheehan
Public Affairs Officer
Region I

April 30th will mark a decade since Entergy submitted a license renewal application to the NRC for the Indian Point nuclear power plant. During the intervening years, thorough NRC staff reviews and a complex hearing on the proposal by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, the quasi-judicial arm of the NRC, have moved steadily forward.

indianpointBut then came an announcement on Jan. 9 by Entergy, the plant’s owner, and New York state. Under an agreement reached between the two parties, Indian Point Unit 2 would permanently shut down by April 30, 2020, and Indian Point Unit 3 by April 30, 2021. (Indian Point Unit 1 ceased operations in 1974).

This represents an earlier retirement of the reactors than proposed in the company’s license renewal application, which sought an extension of Unit 2’s operating license to April 2033 and Unit 3’s to April 2035.

Entergy cited the low cost of natural gas and rising operating costs as primary factors in its decision. The company said it would instead pursue a license renewal for Unit 2 to 2024 and for Unit 3 to 2025 to allow operation until then in the event the plant’s power output is still needed.

Company officials offered assurances that there would be continued adherence to safety requirements for the remainder of the plant’s operational life. NRC inspectors will be on hand to independently verify that all safety commitments are being met.

The NRC has three full-time Resident Inspectors assigned to Indian Point. We also send specialist inspectors to the facility to assess such areas as security, radiation safety and reactor operator training.

Agency staff will also have to complete their license renewal reviews and the hearing process will have to be brought to a conclusion. With respect to the latter, a motion to withdraw the remaining contentions in the hearing process is expected today.

It will be essential for Indian Point employees to maintain a strong focus on safety no matter the plant’s eventual end date. It will be incumbent upon the NRC to ensure that is occurring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baffle Bolts: An Update

Neil Sheehan
Public Affairs Officer
Region I

There have been some new developments since our last blog post, on June 1, regarding degraded reactor vessel bolts identified at a pair of nuclear power plants in the Northeast. Most notably, both the Indian Point 2 plant, in New York, and the Salem 1 plant, in New Jersey, returned to service over the summer.

BaffleBoltsGraphic1_cleanbigfontIndian Point 2 came back online in late June after 278 of the plant’s 832 baffle-former bolts were replaced. As for Salem 1, it was restarted on July 30th after changing out 189 of its 832 baffle-former bolts.

In both cases, prior to the restarts, the NRC conducted independent evaluations of analyses done for the plants’ respective owners by the reactor vendors looking at how many new, more robust bolts had to be installed to maintain safety margins and ensure the structural integrity of the baffle-former plates. The agency also had specialist inspectors at the plants for first-hand observations and information-gathering on bolt-removal and -replacement activities.

Based on those reviews, the NRC concluded that the reactors were safe to operate. The bolts will be subject to further inspections at the reactors’ next refueling outages, which typically occur about once every 18 to 24 months.

Nevertheless, the NRC identified a “green” (very low safety significance) non-cited violation at Indian Point 3 related to the bolts issue in an inspection report issued on Aug. 30th. A similar non-cited violation has also been identified at the Salem nuclear power plant, as documented in an NRC inspection report issued on Sept. 22.

In both cases, the plant owners had not completed a necessary process to document its conclusion, following identification of degraded bolts on one unit, that the second unit was safe to continue to operate. After the NRC raised concerns regarding the deficiencies, the companies undertook corrective actions, including completing and documenting the evaluations.

Looking ahead, there is still more work to be done. Bolts from both reactors have been or will be sent to labs for metallurgical analysis. Also, the NRC will continue to engage the nuclear industry on its plans for addressing the issue

An NRC web page has been updated to reflect the latest available information on this topic, including the NRC slides from a related July meeting and a summary of the session.

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