Palisades Nuclear Plant Restarts

At least they waited till my 2.206 yesterday before starting up. The region III officials were missing from my prehearing...that was really abnormal. I knew something was up. I rather have them watching the start-up preparations. 

What is always missing, there was no information of what broke and why on the CRDM casing to the public before the start-up...  

18 days for this outage, plus 28 day for the SIRWT, it gives us a total of 46 outage days since last outage...  

I bet you it is the worst post outage capacity record ever...

So that is a 58% capacity factor...

Will they even cobble together another month of operation... 

Palisades nuclear plant returned to service

Published : Thursday, 30 Aug 2012, 8:21 AM EDTCOVERT TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — The Palisades nuclear plant in southwestern Michigan has been returned to service following a shutdown that began earlier this month because of a minor steam leak.

Spokesman Mark Savage says in an email that the plant in Van Buren County's Covert Township will be returned to full power over the next several days. It was returned to service Thursday morning following repairs.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been investigating. The agency said the leak was coming from a control rod drive, which is part of the mechanism for shutting down the reactor. It said steam was confined to the building that houses the reactor, and no radiation escaped into the environment. 

The plant owned by New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. was shut down starting Aug. 12.

3:30 pm Aug 30: 

So the NRC says Palisades can’t be trusted...once again they can’t operate in a sustaining “self directed" manner. The NRC has to hold their hands. The NRC had to raise questions like they had over and over again at this plant...

I just find is suspicious the NRC had to keep this secret until after the startup...

Palisades nuclear plant returned toservice

AP Aug. 30, 2012, 12:11 p.m. CDT
The NRC has been investigating the leak as well as looking at the plant's safety culture. The agency said the leak was coming from a control rod drive, which is part of the mechanism for shutting down the reactor. It said steam was confined to the building that houses the reactor, and no radiation escaped into the environment. 

Inspectors raised a number of questions about some of the inspections and analysis performed by the plant, NRC spokeswoman Viktoria Mitlyng said, and the plant performed additional work to ensure the plant was safe to restart. The agency it will review plans for inspections going forward. 

“The NRC provided strong oversight of analysis, repairs and testing," Mitlyng said.