Update: South Texas Project Fiasco

This reminds of the 1970s with multiple crazy component failures, much damage and then extended plant outages. Is this going to be vendor related? Region IV is a mess and the NRC is not holding all these plants to engineering standards. Crazy god damn southerners? This reads like comic books full of "million dollar" (embellished on April 29) screw ups.

These guys are a gold mine for the outage vendors and service providers...

UPDATE: SOUTH TEXAS PROJECT UNIT 2 REACTOR TRI

DESCRIPTION: 

This preliminary notification supplements information in PNO-IV-13-001, issued to describe the event that occurred at South Texas Project, Unit 2 on January 8, 2013 (ADAMS ML13009A362). A fire in main transformer 2A, which was caused by an internal electrical fault, resulted in an automatic reactor trip. South Texas Project Unit 2 declared a Notice of Unusual Event (NOUE)due to the fire.

Update: On April 19, 2013, South Texas Project commenced restart of Unit 2. The event resulted in an extended outage to complete repairs to the turbine and replacement of the main transformer. The main turbine repairs were necessary due to a loss of proper lubrication to the turbine bearings during the plant’s shut down, which required replacement of the bearings. In addition, there was some damage to the turbine blades which required repair. The NRC resident inspectors monitored the licensee’s actions during repair activities, corrective actions and performed a review of the root cause determination for the trip. South Texas Project, Unit 1, remains at 100 percent power. 

The State of Texas has been informed. This information presented herein has been discussed with the licensee and is current as of 2:00 p.m. (CDT) on April 23, 2013.

What Junk!

Published December 29, 2011 at 10:27 P.M. 

WADSWORTH - A month after South Texas Project Unit 2 reactor automatically shut down due to a main generator issue, the unit remains offline. 

The shutdown happened days after the unit returned to 100 percent power following a scheduled refueling and maintenance outage in November. 

"We continue to make excellent progress working through restoration efforts associated with the shutdown of unit 2," said Buddy Eller, general manager of corporate communications and public affairs for South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Co.
The preliminary inspection of the generator indicates damage to stator coils, Eller said. The ground fault appears to have occurred in one of the coils on the non-nuclear side of the unit and did not affect safety related equipment. Unit 1 continues to operate at 100 percent power.

An outage team of about 400 people have worked through the Christmas holidays to repair the problem, he said.