Pilgrim Plant: What Was Behind the Disclosure of the "Bridge Failure" and Shutdown?

Basically, they get away with violating the rules until the plant runs away from the staff and NRC!

We really got the national philosophy of ghost regulations and rules...  "translucent or barely visible wispy shapes rules" that come in and our of reality depending on if they are convenient to profits and plant viability.

1EP5 Maintaining Emergency Preparedness (71114.05 – 1 sample)

a. Inspection Scope

The inspectors reviewed a number of activities to evaluate the efficacy of Entergy’s efforts to maintain the PNPS emergency preparedness program. The inspectors reviewed letters of agreement with offsite agencies; the 10 CFR 50.54(q) Emergency Plan change process and practice; Entergy’s maintenance of equipment important to emergency preparedness; records of evacuation time estimate population evaluation; and provisions for, and implementation of, primary, backup, and alternate ERF maintenance. The inspectors also verified Entergy’s compliance at Pilgrim with new NRC emergency preparedness regulations regarding: emergency action levels for hostile action events; protective actions for on-site personnel during events; emergency declaration timeliness; ERO augmentation and alternate facility capability; evacuation time estimate updates; on-shift ERO staffing analysis; and ANS back-up.

And blizzzard Nemo occured in Feb 2013 knocking out the Met Tower
 

During the 2009 NRC emergency preparedness program inspection, the inspectors determined that the 2008 quality assurance (QA) surveillance performed to justify exceeding the 12-month review frequency did not include an assessment against adequate performance indicators.

 The above on Feb 11, 2013

Swinging in the background before my Dec 3, 2013 contact beginning  at 10 am with Branch Chief Ray Mckinley was a important emergency preparedness "conference bridge failure" and leaking big turbine steam valve. They decided to shutdown to fix it later in the day. 

I leaving it to you to figure out if someone prompted me to make this call. I am uncertain the bridge failure would have been reported if it wasn't for my interest in this. I had talked to the Pilgrim NRC senior resident about this four or five days ago and I suspect senior inspector Max Schneider told his boss. They had failed to report on the Met Tower just recently and I am not sure how deep this goes. 

...I spent about an hour talking to this Ray M. Summed up the conditions in Region 1 and complained the agency has gone weak kneed on us with non cited violation at Indian Point, Seabrook and Pilgrim. I told Ray with the meteorological tower inop, the commissioner chairman came to Pilgrim saying they were one step from Fort Calhoun and we got enormous budgets problem-Natural Gas...now you are throwing out non cited violations like candy. We jostled about the tower being so out many times and the meaning of the national weather service. Told him he he’s got at least three senators gunning for the agency and they don’t need 60 votes anymore. I said you are using unjustly the NWS as a tool so you don’t have to site the plant. Your guys are going weak on us at a critical time.

He listened to me attentively and engage me...actually another guy I like. I am not saying he is on my side by a far shot.

Told him the big problem is you don’t have enough horsepower such that these plants don’t fear you enough and fear the day when they don’t tell you everything about their problems.

Power Reactor Event Number: 49605
Facility: PILGRIMRegion: 1 State: MAUnit:[1][][]RX Type:[1] GE-3NRC Notified By: PAUL GALLANTHQ OPS Officer: VINCE KLCO Notification Date: 12/03/2013Notification Time: 20:04 [ET]Event Date: 12/03/2013Event Time: 13:30 [EST]Last Update Date: 12/03/2013
Emergency Class: NON EMERGENCY10 CFR Section:
50.72(b)(3)(xiii)- LOSS COMM/ASMT/RESPONSEPerson (Organization):
WILLIAM COOK (R1DO)
Unit SCRAM Code RX CRIT Initial PWR Initial RX Mode Current PWR Current RX Mode1 N Y 100 Power Operation 82 Power Operation

Event Text

LOSS OF EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS CAPABILITY- EP CONFERENCING LINES UNAVAILABLE

"At approximately 1330 [EST] on Tuesday, December 03, 2013, while performing a table top drill, Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station (PNPS) discovered that EP [Emergency Preparedness] bridge conferencing lines were unavailable. The conference lines affected included the mitigation line, plant data phone, radiation data phone, emergency conferencing line, and the back up conference bridge line. Reviews to determine the cause of the event and efforts to restore the system are ongoing.

"The licensee has determined the Emergency Plan to be functional based on other communication methods that are available between onsite and offsite facilities. These include direct telephone lines, portable handheld radios, satellite phones and cell phones. Immediate actions to establish compensatory conferencing lines have been completed. On-going actions are in-progress to ensure procedure instruction is provided at each facility to enable use of the compensatory conference lines.

"At the time of this report, the plant is currently operating at 82% power due to a planned power maneuver unrelated to the reported communication event.

"The licensee has notified the NRC Senior Resident Inspector [and will notify the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

During a table-top emergency preparedness drill earlier that day, staff discovered that the “bridge-conferencing” system that allows operators to remain in constant communication during an emergency wasn't working.

... So now we are talking about the pathetic widespread condition of the infrastructure necessary to reliable evacuate the public and notify the state in a meltdown or potential meltdown.

I am telling you the truth, I am certain today he is thinking WTF am I dealing with that Mr Mulligan?
Leaky valve causes Pilgrim plant shutdown

Dec 4

Representatives from Entergy Corp., Pilgrim's owner-operator, were offering a scheduled presentation to officials and residents at Plymouth Town Hall on Tuesday night, touting the nuclear plant's safety features and outlining post-Fukushima federal requirements for future improvement. 

During a table-top emergency preparedness drill earlier that day, staff discovered that the “bridge-conferencing” system that allows operators to remain in constant communication during an emergency wasn't working.

... I kept hitting him over and over ...why wasn’t the Met Tower reported to the NRC and the public. Why wasn’t it in an event report or as UE? Why didn’t the agency enforce this?

He never gave me a direct answer...so I would wait a few minutes and ask him the same question in different way. I did this at least three times.

So today we get this daily event report you see and shutdown on a steam leak...

No question about it, this guy was really intelligent. He had a lot of miles under his belt! He got what I was doing.

... This is for Entergy’s benefit.

So I called region 1 yesterday morning...their phone answering system is terrible. I get the regional administrator’s number and give the secretary a call. She gives me the number to the inspector’s boss. I leave a message on his telephone number. Right, I outline my past interest on this on the message recording, my complaint in their system...the issues I want to talk about with this. Maybe 10 am.

Then he called me back at around 2 pm...

I tell him right off the bat, I initiated your Met tower NRC inspection and the findings. He scoffs at this...no I said, I got it on your document system. You were responding to me complaint. Get a blah, blah, blah, my inspectors were working on that long before that, he said. I said, I doubt it, I waited for the LER and the inspection report, you guys were in la la land. You guys didn’t have a clue the met tower was out in blizzard Nemo and many times before that.

He was feeling me out if I had Pilgrim staff cooperation on it?

Just like his quick phone call back to me....he was wondering if I had cooperation on the phone bridge thingy being out yesterday and the upcoming daily event report. They probable had the drill in the morning table top. I wonder if he was wondering how much I knew about the steam leak.

... "conferencing lines” : is this entergy's property or the NRC's...or is it a private conferencing sevice?

Is this another thing we don't understand how it will perform in an emergency.

.. I talked about the new complexity we have with the national weather services with my boss buddy yesterday. We don’t understand how the communication lines are set up; we don’t have any understanding of the communications and computer junk in the National Weather Service, the organizational rules, their QA...

Right, we got a highly trained staff at the plant and we got a QA system over the whole deal. We got and dependent regulator who oversees everything. We don’t have that with the NWS. This is what supposed to make the met tower highly reliable.

Then he talks about there is very good procedures that allows using the NWS. I remind him, say you own a jet airplane and have the best and most expensive procedures in the world. Those procedures mean nothing unless the pilot is trained over and over again with how to operate the ship...and he says highly proficient at operating that craft.

Good procedures don't mean shit if they aren't tested over and over again in real world situations

.... A real accident might not use a conferencing line? Right, but then they wouldn’t have made it a NRC mandated daily event report.

Was the states involved with this boondoggle?

... His name was Ray Mckinley...he is the branch chief.

... Infrastructure issues continue to plague Plymouth's Pilgrim Nuclear

While officials briefed selectmen why Fukushima can't happen here, reactor had to be shutdown because of steam leak 

Read more: http://www.wickedlocal.com/plymouth/news/x182...

... Talked yesterday about the Palisades debacle. I would have thought Entergy would have learned from that painful episode. They were up and down a lot...very costly shutdowns...lost reputational points.

I thought they would never want to go that way again as a corporation...then we have the Palisades adventure all over again with Pilgrim.

I told Ray, this isn’t just about the Met tower...it was about a pattern of poor behavior at Pilgrim, back to Palisades...within Entergy for a very long time.

And they don’t seem to learn by their mistake...

.Feynman's Appendix to the Rogers Commission Report on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident 

Conclusions 

If a reasonable launch schedule is to be maintained, engineering often cannot be done fast enough to keep up with the expectations of originally conservative certification criteria designed to guarantee a very safe vehicle. In these situations, subtly, and often with apparently logical arguments, the criteria are altered so that flights may still be certified in time. They therefore fly in a relatively unsafe condition, with a chance of failure of the order of a percent (it is difficult to be more accurate). 

Official management, on the other hand, claims to believe the probability of failure is a thousand times less. One reason for this may be an attempt to assure the government of NASA perfection and success in order to ensure the supply of funds. The other may be that they sincerely believed it to be true, demonstrating an almost incredible lack of communication between themselves and their working engineers. 

In any event this has had very unfortunate consequences, the most serious of which is to encourage ordinary citizens to fly in such a dangerous machine, as if it had attained the safety of an ordinary airliner. The astronauts, like test pilots, should know their risks, and we honor them for their courage. Who can doubt that McAuliffe was equally a person of great courage, who was closer to an awareness of the true risk than NASA management would have us believe?Let us make recommendations to ensure that NASA officials deal in a world of reality in understanding technological weaknesses and imperfections well enough to be actively trying to eliminate them. They must live in reality in comparing the costs and utility of the Shuttle to other methods of entering space. And they must be realistic in making contracts, in estimating costs, and the difficulty of the projects. Only realistic flight schedules should be proposed, schedules that have a reasonable chance of being met. If in this way the government would not support them, then so be it. NASA owes it to the citizens from whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and informative, so that these citizens can make the wisest decisions for the use of their limited resources. 

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. 

Dr. Feynman discusses his experience on the Rogers Commission as part of his second autobiographical volume.

...For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

You get it, the implication was the NRC was sitting on the steam leak to dress up the pathetic shutdown history of Pilgrim. But it's occording to the rules.
 

2013 Pilgrim shutdowns and glitches

Jan. 10-17: Both recirculation pumps tripped, followed by a head drain valve leak.

Jan. 20-24: Leaking safety valve.

Feb. 8-16: Winter storm, 169 hours down.

Aug. 22-26: All three main water pumps shut down.

Sept. 8-17: Steam pipe leak.

Oct. 14-21: Off-site power to plant unavailable because of NStar problem, which caused initial shutdown. Plant remained closed for two days after power restored because of faulty mechanical pressure regulator, which caused water levels in the nuclear reactor to become too high.

Dec. 4: Leaky steam valve. Reactor still down.

OTHER INCIDENTS

July 15: Loss of control room alarms. Plant stayed online. Alarms came back on with no explanation. Reason for malfunction never found.

July 16: Heat wave warmed seawater temperatures, forcing the plant to power down to about 85 percent intermittently. Federal regulation requires seawater, used for cooling the reactor, to be no warmer than 75 degrees.

Sources: NRC website and Entergy press releases