Root Cause Evaluation Report
Plant Trip During Panel ED-11-2 Maintenance
CR-PLP-2011-4822: 09-25-11
REPORT DATE: 10-17-11
Rev 2
This is how repetitively ugly it gets at a operating nuclear plant. It is so blatantly ugly at the highest levels, why didn't the NRC pick up this operational ugliness and crack heads at Palisades until they reformed. The whole bunch of them are "don't rock the boat" or "controversy" adverse. And this intimidation comes from the highest levels of the NRC and the nuclear industry, you be intrusive and controversial, we will guillotine your head off.
You can make the same case about the lack of intrusiveness with senior NRC management...they don't want to interfere with plant capacity factor or congressional campaign contribution. We'd use to like to do work overnight and on weekends, didn't want the big wig executives overseeing operational or maintenance issues. And the big wigs liked it that way because it gives them plausible deniability if things headed south. We could do all our cheating behind the sheets and everyone knew we were cheating in our darkened corners.
All the NRC executives think doing good is throwing powerless reports, non cited violations and paperwork at a plant. Doing good means making a plant do good behavior in the ends of our nation and collective good! To the NRC, doing good means fulfilling the needs of the neutered NRC's bureaucracy and rules...not nuclear safety being the overriding priority and setting conservative standards for them all. You see, the NRC thinks its their job to fulfill their bureaucracy, churn powerless rules and paperwork, but never interfere with plant operation and capacity no matter how ugly it gets. Is their internal processes fulfilled, but very few of them check their conscience to see if the NRC processes are making a utlity behave for the good of the nuulear industry and our nation? They talk about the generation x'ers being so spoiled, somebody saying boo to them will cause them to quit?
The recent history of Palisades is they keep throwing reports at them and nothing changes.
The whole history of the NRC is they are adverse to really engage a plant...until a plant gets in enough trouble where it threatening the whole regulatory régime. Being serious with Palisades is now a NRC operation to contain regulatory credibility.
HEADACHES AT PALISADES: BROKEN SEALS & FAILED HEALS
NRC's response to Dave:
"Leakage from the CRDs has historically started small and slowly risen over time, typically over several months. The licensee monitors CRD seal leak-off temperatures each shift and this parameter has proven to be a reliable, real time indicator of seal degradation. Based on these and other indications discussed below, operators have always had advance indications of seal leakage approaching an amount that, by procedure, requires action."
Reminds me of the service water coupling...
My concern, lessens learned in the Davis Besse head control rod drive leak, a leak like this could obscure a more important leak indicating a more serious safety issue. Could a non safety leak obsure a safety significant leak? DB had notorious pressurizer or letdown relief leaks over decades...these reliefs valve leaked over and over again. Even through these relief valves weren't leaking, DB improperly blamed the dangerous head lead leak on these relief valve leakage. A phantom non safety relief leakage based on poor maintenance could obscure a very serious ongoing reactor system pressure barrier leakage.
As example, the reactor head or other important piping might begin to be cracked and leaking...Palisades would assume it is just a control rod drive seal leak and think they got months to shutdown.
Detecting containment air radiation is a sensitive means to detect reactor leakage. Again a control rod seal leak will obscure the measurement of containment air radiation.
The trick is, how positive is the indications of the control rod seal leak is for the plant operators. In the primary containment they have very limited means to actually see what is leaking...
...And remember, this is not a leak of pure water. There are high concentrations of boron in the coolant and there are worries about the results of plating out boron on the containment coolers and other components. It also makes the interior of the containment more radioactive and difficult to perform maintenance on.
How about in Aug 10, 2004 they shut downed for a control rod leak and reactor coolant pump leak and maintenance issue. How could they tell the what leakage came from where.
New 2:50 p.m. CST 1/5/2012
Palisades plant going offline for maintenance work
COVERT TOWNSHIP, Mich.— The Palisades nuclear power plant in southwestern Michigan is being shut down temporarily for maintenance
...It is unfathomable how many times Palisades has been shutdown to fix their control rod drive seals. I believe these things can leak for a long period of time before they are required to shutdown. One wonders last MFP recirc valve trip if these seals were known to be leaking and they failed to fix it?
What can be said for sure, tripping and restarting this plant to this magnitude damages these big machine and weakens the fuel cladding!
New 01/05/2012 11:25am
Things heating up?
NRC issues violation notice to Palisades nuclear power plant
The NRC only has the power to write reports after the accident and paper whip a plant through the useless ROP!
These are my examples the NRC is a toothless regulator...the regulator can only write reports after the accident happens. They have very limited capabilities to change bad behavior of a bad nuclear power plant because of campaign contributions and heavy industry influence. The regulator don't have the power to change bad utility behavior.
It is interesting, I talked a little about ceremonial power and real power yesterday with NRC Region III allegations people over Palisades. Just because of your ceremonial power, who you are and the position you hold, sometimes this gives you the power to shape the outcome of events without having direct power to influence a event. We were talking about the DC short and the MFP recirc valve misoperation leading to a scram. I was telling these officials you might not have direct influence through regs, but you always have the ability to potentially change a heart over a situation through the ceremonial power you carry. The NRC branch manager popped up, "well I tried that with calling a high Palisades nuclear plant official asking him to say shutdown until they understood what caused the MFP recirc valve trip". I was very disappointed with this off the record back door channel to Entergy with the NRC...
By the way, this is a little humor on the Aux Feed Pump spurious trip, maybe the MFP recirc valve operation trip is another spurious trip. To this day, the NRC and Entergy still does not know what caused the MFP recirc valve plant trip. I consider Entergy's AFP spurious trip theory that the NRC won't accept as attempt by entergy to exhaust the resources of the NRC. If we keep the NRC busy on defending themselves or running down useless branches of a event, they won't have the time to find all the other crap we are not disclosing doing because of very limited NRC resources.
1) Considering how bad Palisades is, the NRC should have had the power to make them stay shutdown until this organization fully understands the MFP recirc valve trip and correct all the factors that caused the plant trip.
2) The NRC with the DC short on Sept 23 through the shorted and erratic control room indications prior to the scram should have declared a emergency stop work order and immediately required a reactor scram.
We got another runaway oil well in the gulf of Mexico, everyone knows it is drastically unsafe, but nobody's got the power to make them stop drilling to prevent a gulf catastrophe...
PALISADES NUCLEAR PLANT - NRC SPECIAL INSPECTION TEAM (SIT) REPORT 05000255/2011014 PRELIMINARY YELLOW FINDING
"These electrical losses resulted in a reactor and turbine trip at approximately 3:06 p.m. on September 25, 2011"....
page 22:
Description: On Friday, September 23, 2011, the licensee performed troubleshooting and replacement of DC Breaker 72-123 on Panel D11-2 due to the loss of indication lights for Door MZ-50, the emergency airlock. During maintenance restoration of the FME barrier for Panel D11-2 (a metal strip down the center of the panel), control room alarms were received for the TG voltage regulator, generator over-excitation, and a loss of indication for multiple containment isolation valves. In addition, a loss of normal instrument air was experienced in the plant. Troubleshooting performed by electricians Friday night and early Saturday morning identified a 1/16-inch gap between the Panel D11-2 positive horizontal bus stab and the contacts on Breaker 72-119, which could cause the intermittent power loss to the breakers in Panel D11-2
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