Employee Sabotage: Knocking Off Line The Waterford Nuclear Plant?

Update 5 pm 

I didn’t have to through decades of NRC documents to discover this. It is the newest inspection report. These are the guys who have long term issues with keeping their diesel generators operable. The DG day tank vent corrosion and not have a direct indication on DG room ventilation flow, the broken fan event.

So the below indicates an intentional and malicious attitude of Entergy with not following the rules, only following the rules Entergy thinks are valid. The below basically surrounds the facility capability to resist fires per licensing and for the crew to alternately shut down the reactor if the control room becomes uninhabitable. Most other plants have fixed this issues decades ago.

I think the staff feels, my plant’s operations is becoming chaotic...the nuclear industry has made the NRC too impotent to control the licensees. My plant is becoming dangerous to me and my community...I secretly tripped the plant hoping to drag in all the officials trying to get them to fix my plant.

Say Entergy refuses to comply with appendix R. The wrong doing has two components to it.

1) The risk of the non-compliance creating a severe core meltdown. Admittedly it would be an extremely infrequence event. This is the normal way the NRC comes up with a violation.

2) Destroying the safety culture in three components. Not carried in traditional enforcement. Traditionally the NRC treats risk as a isolated condition, while if the licensee is promiscuously with not following the rules, it creates the condition where nobody has to follow the rule. Now you got a nuclear plant staff with global integrity problem without bounds. 

  

a) If my company violated the rules and the NRC is powerless to make them to comply...this behavior means it ok for me to not follow the rules as long as I don’t get caught.

b) The idea the licensee is impervious to control by outsiders and the NRC...my company can crush me if I don’t behave their way. Make me behave contrary to my conscience, licensing and following the rules.

b) Configuring the plant contrary to licensing and the NRC rules...have no way to know what configuration the plant is in. Declaring a component is operable when management knows it is not or a employee thinks that is what management wants.

Check out how many of these violations are decades old. Even though a licencee is currently not in conformance with plant licencing... becuase it is a decades old and a current violation, this means it not a violation or can be giving  paper-cut not sited violation. Only the NRC can frame crazy language like this. 

It obvious agency and licencees contempt for following the rules. This naturally leads to chaotic plant operations and many safety components knowingly and unknowingly degraded or broken. What if you were employee in a totally out of control plant and you had many legitimate reason not to trust the agency or your company. What if you didn't trust anyone. What would you do...how would you drag attention to the agency and the plant. tripping a plant is really not safety related, but it is a attention getter.

A plant equipment operator or licensed operator got a thousand ways to trip with zero chance of getting caught. The example is in the feedpump room. Isolating a pressure instrumentation line, then open the vent line....the putting the valves back into the normal position. It would take second for this and you guarantee

a plant trip without getting caught.    

May 27, 2015: WATERFORD STEAM ELECTRIC STATION, UNIT 3 – NRC TRIENNIAL FIRE PROTECTION INSPECTION REPORT 05000382/2015007 AND EXERCISE OF ENFORCEMENT DISCRETION

• Green. The team identified a non-cited violation of License Condition 2.C.(9), “Fire Protection,” for the failure to ensure the required separation between fire areas. Specifically, the licensee installed fire barriers on two ventilation ducts which were not in a configuration demonstrated to provide the required three-hour fire-rated separation between fire areas. The licensee entered this issue into their corrective action program as Condition Report CR-WF3-2015-00540 and established an hourly fire watch as a compensatory measure until corrective actions can be taken (Fire Impairments 15-30 and 15-31). The failure to ensure the required separation between fire areas was a performance deficiency.

This finding did not have a cross-cutting aspect since it was not indicative of current licensee performance since this fire barrier configuration was installed in the 1980s.(Section 1R05.02.b)

• Green. The team identified a non-cited violation of License Condition 2.C.9, “Fire Protection,” for the failure to correct adverse conditions associated with fire protection. Specifically, the licensee failed to correct longstanding deficiencies with the Appendix R emergency lighting units. The licensee entered this issue into their corrective action program as Condition Report CR-WF3-2015-00593 and operators had flashlights available as a compensatory measure.

• Green. The team identified a non-cited violation of License Condition 2.C.9, “Fire Protection,” for the failure to periodically test and demonstrate the 8-hour capacity of the Appendix R emergency lighting units. The licensee entered this issue into their corrective action program as Condition Report CR-WF3-2015-00856 and operators had flashlights available as a compensatory measure. The failure to periodically test and demonstrate the 8-hour capacity of the Appendix R emergency lighting units was a performance deficiency.

• Enforcement discretion. Specifically, the team identified four examples where the licensee failed to maintain an alternative shutdown procedure that successfully mitigated all postulated alternative shutdown scenarios. This finding affects 10 CFR 50.48 and has been screened and determined to warrant enforcement discretion per the Interim Enforcement Policy Regarding Enforcement Discretion for Certain Fire Protection Issues (10 CFR 50.48).

A employee cry for help? More like Entergy is sabotaging plant capacity factor on a maintenance and plant upkeep ideological philosophy with putting stock price above plant safety. 

I see this kind of fire accident as extremely infrequent. But if you get to the point of having to run a diesel generator without cooling water for ten minutes with most of your safety systems already  stripped away from you, at this point to a licenced operator, one error or miscalculation has the strong possibility of creating catastrophic problems for the local community. One error has the high possibility to be stratospherically signifiant. The operator is going to be upset and his plant is in such a condition...an error is highly likely. Here is when the engineers screw the operator putting them in the position of getting blamed for the accident, with the calculation of the risk outcome of the fire being too complex to understand. This is when all their self interested assumptions will show up to screw to the operator. There just got to be simple systems and procedure at this point...it has to be absolutely be bullet proof. The system today is set up where as the consequences of a misstep increases, the operator has less qualified testing, components and procedures. As the consequences of a accident increase, the quality if the system and components decrease.  

Green. The team identified a Green non-cited violation of License Condition 2.C.9, “Fire Protection,” for the failure to adequately correct a previous violation. Specifically, the licensee failed to provide a bounding calculation for the amount of time available for operators to establish component cooling water during an alternative shutdown. The licensee developed this calculation in response to Non-cited Violation 2012007-02. Description. During the 2012 triennial fire protection inspection, the team identified a violation for the failure to perform a safe shutdown design calculation.

Just look at this, in 2012 the NRC discovers a not safe calculation in this extremely grave emergency procedure, gives Entergy a minor violation over it. The expectation is if the NRC violates them, the problem will be fixed conservatively and right. Entergy throws up the middle finger at the agency in 2012, gives them back a half ass correction to the calculation. The object is, how much time does the operator have to perform a step in the procedure without cooling water to the diesel generator before damage occurs. Have they ever done a experiment on a similar diesel generator with no cooling water...does anyone have the actual proof with how long a diesel generator  has without cooling water before failure. All they talk about these calculations and formulas without any proof they reflect the truth.   

You are in the realm here where these rules and procedures are sacred at this point..

So the NRC violates them again on their first 2012 violation and then gives them non sited green violation on a host of rules breaking over appendix R and the alternate shutdown on this inspection. You know, our rules aren't sacred. They are really telegraphing to all the employees on site following or not following the secret rules is insignificant in the big scheme of things. This occurs over and over again at this site telling the employees rules are insignificant. Management treat the NRC rule as just optional.  Basically all of risk perspectives teaches the staff that not following the sacred rules is insignificant.

At the bottom of this pile of horseshit might be one employee with a conscience thinking, my management and the federal agency overseeing the whole shebang is completely and utterly crazy. My plant is running totally out of control. Don’t you wish this employee was there in TMI or Davis Besse? Holy shit, the rules and polices of the NRC might not contain the control of this site. It won't be the first time a employee felt this in the industry. I don’t know anyone I can trust and  the outsiders won’t understand the technical issues behind my concerns. My only hope is a big attention getting ploy dragging the multitudes toward the plant's problem. This surely can fix my plant's problems.

What will happen if I secretly trip the plant? Will that sober everyone up?     

Michael Mulligan

Dear Sir, It must be an extraordinary coincident feed pump trips took out two plants (River Bend, Waterford) Entergy plants within 24 hours and 50 miles from each other. I think you need early to get

To: allegation@nrc.gov  Today at 7:48 AM 

Dear Sir, 

It must be an extraordinary coincident feed pump trips took out two plants (River Bend, Waterford) Entergy plants within 24 hours and 50 miles from each other. I think you need early to get out front of this and publicly explain these events. 

1) Entergy treating their employees in a draconian manner...is causing their employees to retaliate by sabotaging the plants. They secretly tripped Waterford to get even? 

2) Or the electrical troubles is spanning across two plants indicating it is a fleet wide problem?3) Request a special inspection and FBI investigation on the Waterford Plant?

Sincerely, 

Mike Mulligan 

Hinsdale, NH 

16033368320

You get it with unreliable equipment, a feedwater trip and issues with a automatic bus transfer that didn't occur? 

05000382

Power Reactor	Event Number: 51116
Facility: WATERFORD Region: 4 State: LA Unit: [3] [ ] [ ] RX Type: [3] CE NRC Notified By: SCOTT MEIKLEJOHN HQ OPS Officer: DONG HWA PARK	Notification Date: 06/03/2015 Notification Time: 21:36 [ET] Event Date: 06/03/2015 Event Time: 17:05 [CDT] Last Update Date: 06/03/2015
Emergency Class: NON EMERGENCY 10 CFR Section: 50.72(b)(2)(iv)(B) - RPS ACTUATION - CRITICAL 50.72(b)(3)(iv)(A) - VALID SPECIF SYS ACTUATION	Person (Organization): JACK WHITTEN (R4DO) SCOTT MORRIS (NRR) WILLIAM GOTT (IRD)

Unit	SCRAM Code	RX CRIT	Initial PWR	Initial RX Mode	Current PWR	Current RX Mode
3	M/R	Y	100	Power Operation	0	Hot Standby

Event Text

MANUAL REACTOR TRIP DUE TO LOSS OF MAIN FEEDWATER PUMP "This is a non-emergency notification from Waterford 3. "At 1705 [CDT] the reactor was manually tripped in anticipation of an automatic trip due to loss of main feedwater pump 'A'. "The plant is currently in mode 3 and stable with emergency feedwater feeding and maintaining both steam generators due to an automatic emergency feed actuation signal. "During the trip, the 'B' electrical safety and non safety busses did not automatically transfer from the unit auxiliary transformer to the startup transformer causing a loss of off-site power to the 'B' electrical busses. This resulted in a loss of main feedwater pump 'B'. "The 'B' emergency diesel generator started as designed and reenergized the 'B' safety related buses. "The plant entered the emergency operating procedure for loss of main feedwater. "Off-site power has been restored to the 'B' safety and non safety busses, and the emergency diesel generator 'B' is secured. All control rods fully inserted into the core following the trip. Decay heat is being removed by the main condenser using the turbine bypass valves. The electric plant is in a normal shutdown lineup. The licensee has notified the NRC Resident Inspector.