Two Unit Millstone Nuclear Facility Going Crazy On Us.

 

The media really is missing this...this kind of event and resultant shutdown is rather unprecedented.

A turbine drive feed pump is a relativity simple component. They been having unfixable problems for a year or more.

1) So a unprecedented two special inspections over this pump..they they found a piece of metal somewhere in the newest event.

2) A two plant trip over a switchyard bum relay, total loss of off site power. Then component and personall issues during the incident.

3) First the media failed in Fukushima in notifying the extent of the nuclear village …then they had the earthquake.

4) The NRC just doesn't have the education or the skills necessary to keep a facility away from extreme chaos and this unnecessary complexity.
July 30: Sheehan says the turbine-driven auxiliary water pump leading to the shutdown was tested and its flow rate is acceptable. The cause of low flow from the pump was identified as a piece of metal in an opening. The object is being analyzed.

The media doesn't catch what is important here...where did the metal come from.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION REQUIRED SHUTDOWN DUE TO TURBINE DRIVEN AFW PUMP FAILURE

"At 1458 [EDT] on 7/26/14, the [Technical Specification] 72 hour action statement for TDAFWP [Turbine Driven Auxiliary Feedwater Pump] inoperable expires (LCO 3.7.1.1 Action C). Per Technical Specification Action Statement, plant is required to be in HOT STANDBY by 2058 on 7/26/14 (6 hours) and in HOT SHUTDOWN by 0858 on 7/27/14 (additional 12 hours). MPS [Millstone Power Station] Unit 2 shutdown (using normal procedures) has commenced at 1411 when troubleshooting and repairs were unable to determine and correct cause of low pump recirculation flow. Additional activities will continue to correct issue."

Unit 3 is not affected by this event. All safety-related systems and equipment required for safe plant shutdown are available.

The licensee notified the NRC Resident Inspector, Waterford Dispatch, and State of Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

Originally posted om June 2,2014 

June 3

Hmm, so I called the resident inspectors...they decided to sic the Branch Chief at me (their boss). He basically didn’t know much of the design of the facilities. If I hear one more time,” that is in an investigative process, I can’t discuss that issue with you” I am going to throw up.

Basically, the air compressors are a non-safety system and the cooling water system to the air compressor is non safety system...so they lose the cooling water system to the air compressors during accidents that gets them to the diesel generators.  

They lost the air compressors on no cooling water...

I believe they botched the emergency operator procedures...either they did an improper valve line-up or they just forgot to do the lineup. So they have to manually realigned from one cooling water system into another cooling water...it is like the plant was built in the 1950’s third world of Guatemala. Why wasn’t the realignment automatic like ABS brakes?  The control room operators in this event were grossly and severely overwhelmed with garbage, chaos and complexity.

What would indicate safety for the exacts same parameter readings and switch operations...the simulator playback of the event...a quiet and confident control room staff’s response to these events s or a control room staff in disarrays, disorder and in object panic...

I got the cheap fix to this guy, it will never happen again...mandate that air compressors can never be used for any future shutdown, either normal or transient. Hey, they aren’t safety related. Then they will be properly trained on it. The NRC tells me it’s human performance issues.

The chief doesn’t know if it’s a single air compressors system for the two units or individual air compressors system.  I asked, why didn’t the plants use their onsite diesel air compressors? At this point, I thought the chief was getting irked at me. I said a lot of plants out there have a temporary and prepositioned onsite emergency diesel air compressors with quick disconnects and hookups. He said Millstone are not one of them guys. This will be in the inspection report.

Seems the aux turbine driven feed pump just had flow or pressure perturbations during the LOOP. They caught the problem on recorders way after the shutdown. You can tune these guys for operations at power or operations after a scam...but it is extremely hard to tune them for both kinds of operations. Right, there are different amounts of steam flows, DPs and pressures between them. Bet you they don’t have sufficient time and opportunity to tune them on the way to shut down.

Or these machines are dinosaurs and they don’t have any old women and men around to know how to tune them.  

I predicted a special inspection from the first day the event notification came out...

"I wonder if a special inspection is around the corner with this guys...."

 
June 2:

Why didn't the NRC disclose this many days ago when they decided to perform this special inspection...why wait to disclose this once on site?

I bet you they thought, WTF...Mike Mulligan called the site before we even announced it.

NRC Special Inspection to Review Issues during Unplanned Outage

On May 25th at Millstone Nuclear Power Plant

“Specifically, there was an unexpected loss of “non-safety instrument air” at Unit 3 following the loss of off-site power

In addition to these problems, the NRC team will review the operation of the unit’s turbine-driven auxiliary feedwater pump during the event.”

Just saying, at 10:30 am this morning I gave the Millstone’s senior resident inspector a call. I inquired if he had time to discuss the LOOP events. He talked about going to a meeting, he asked could I call back tomorrow at about the same time.

Told him, you better bone up on the “air compressors” problem for tomorrow...

Isn’t this another amazing coincidence?

June 1 in Linkedin:

“As far as Dave C, don’t forget about Millstone’s power excursion accident in late 2011 and another special inspection of this year over the repetitive failures of the turbine feed pump. These guys are sicker than the NRC makes them out to be. Overt capture behavior!”

Then the day before at the Vermont Yankee, with me talking to Region I Administrator Bill Dean and speaking about our NE nuclear infrastructure problems. “We are watching you very carefully.”

Feb 3: 

NRC Begins Special Inspection At Millstone Unit 3 Nuclear Power Plant

"Among the areas to be reviewed during the Special Inspection are Dominion’s responses to the issues, including the adequacy and completeness of testing on the pump and root-cause evaluations of the problems. It will expand on earlier assessments performed by the NRC Resident Inspectors assigned to Millstone on a full-time basis and by NRC specialist inspectors.

“We have witnessed problems involving this safety-related component stretching back to last May,”NRC Region I Administrator Bill Dean said. “The fact that these issues occurred on multiple occasions despite repeated efforts to repair this component has prompted us to take a closer look at the situation.”

On May 15, 2013, at the end of a refueling and maintenance outage, plant personnel observed that the turbine-driven auxiliary feedwater pump was experiencing speed oscillations, or unexpected fluctuations, during testing. There were also problems involving the pump on several other dates, most recently on Jan. 23, 2014. The issues included oscillations and overspeeding.”

 

I am just saying having multiple degradations and failures like these over a short period of time, having the regulator throw two rare special inspection at a plant for the same troubles...indicates the agency is captured and they don’t have enough fear or horsepower to turn the hearts of a bad actor plant. This is a failure of the NRC. Throwing more paperwork at a plant doesn’t change their hearts or knowledge in itself isn’t sufficient to make a plant operate in the straight and narrow.

The NRC must be into the closing process of the first special inspection. I going to asked the NRC to finish up writing it without seeing anything in this recent aux turbine pump troubles and then include it in Adams...  

You catch it, the troubles seem to be escalating...

June 1

Madalina,

That is just great. Now i am going to have to look up another difficult word in a dictionary (divagate). I spend half my time here looking up new words. Just because I am stupider than you, it shouldn’t give you the right to hold me up to higher standards than all the rest of you smarter people. This is the bane of existence to the poor and disenfranchised all over the world.

I never really you understood why educated people have a penchant to put issues in any old artificial category or order. I am sorry I just don’t get it. You’d rather debate what category to put an issue in, than fix it or acknowledge it is a problem.

A person here brought up environmental issues with coal and many and many other issues unrelated to the category at hand. Some even admitted than their entries really aren’t related to the title. We all draw outside the lines here at one time or another. I do respect your enforcement of order on this discussion site and have great respect, more than you than you realize with a central authority or even in government. Certainly I don’t think many people respect their government here, and the antis are worse than you!

Yes, I do have less education than you and have difficulty with writing...why do you openly have to humiliate me over it.

In the whistleblower businesses we call this rules-ies. It when a person has a disagreement over a safety or corruption issue...then management holds the troublemaker to a different set of standard or rules enforcement then their friends. If you aren’t in my group, then we will hold accountable to a different set of rules. If I am a national regulator and worst my vaulted rules and policies... but I can subvert the reputation of a regulator...undermine government itself... by protecting the agency and a troubled plant through the selective releasing of information at a public annual public meeting. Many times the game of rule-sies leads to both sides tattling to higher manager or the regulator over any perception of rules violations. It is a war of the rules. ..the first causality in war is truth.

What I find so despicable here is the anonymous managers assuming they understand what my comment meant (in my head) without a chance to explain. This is so very cowardly. So you have anonymous managers and unknown infractions...or secret infractions. These are all ingredients of the McCarthy era, Guantanamo Bay or the Ceausescu era. It is a rule or law is applied one way for your friends, then another way for someone who sees the world differently than you.

I won’t even go there in you game of painting me as a fallacy maker...you haven’t even had the courage to identify my fallacy making. I think it was unprofessional to paint me with the word rant. If I called you or one of your managers as ranting, I’d be banned for life. I wonder what kind of environment it be if you had anti-nuclear managers...how many of you pro nuke guys would be moderated.

http://steamshovel2002.blogspot.com/2014/05/banned-by-linkedin-nuclear-safety-group.html

Continued

I was at the last Vermont Yankee annual ( 2013) conduct of plant operations meeting with the NRC last week. We put on a pretty sophisticated presentation to the NRC. They wanted public feedback and we gave it to them. My job was to talk about the problems with their new diesel generator...it is the last ditch power source to the plant. Course it is my diesel generator...I forced them to get it. I talked about regional infrastructure problems to the top NRC’s regional administrator. The Millstone recent LOOP, Pilgrims issue with their switchyards and their repetitive LOOPs, and the whole thing not designed for the climate. As far as Dave C, don’t forget about Millstone’s power excursion accident in late 2011 and another special inspection of this year over the repetitive failures of the turbine feed pump. These guys are sicker than the NRC makes them out to be. Overt capture behavior!

So the NRC is playing rules-ies here in the annual meeting. It is the selective release of information saying its one kind of meeting and then doing another kind of meeting...they didn’t want to get the violations into the newspaper. Basically, everyone is given 3 minutes to speak or ask questions...hardly enough to even get a response. It is common knowledge the NRC security guy with the microphone gives 2 minutes to some people and 6 minutes or more to other people. If we can’t trust the NRC not to play rules-ies, the selective release of information to make a plant look better than they are...to be ethical and moral...why would you expect the owners on managers on linkedin to play fair and be moral? Our whole political system was invented to prevent the tyranny of the majority over the minority. This is a huge symptom of the NRC being captured. This below story was carried all over the state.

http://www.reformer.com/state/ci_25870194/critics-see-lack-info-at-vermont-yankee-meeting

“We feel the public was shortchanged by NRC's shifting the emphasis of the meeting to general information on decommissioning at the expense of focused discussion about significant deficiencies in management and operations at Entergy Vermont Yankee," said Clay Turnbull, a trustee and spokesman with the nuclear watchdog group New England Coalition.

Turnbull, who attended the meeting, said in an email, "Nowhere in print, on a screen or verbally did NRC present the ten violations of 2013 to the public. The violations repeatedly point to management making poor decisions, poor project planning, and cutting costs at the expense of safety."

I afraid my reputation will be sullied if I continue to participating in such an unfair and unjust site. If the moderation ever clears, I’ll still have the sword of Damocleshanging over my head within a secretive Ceausescu era star camber. I will never be completely free to express my thoughts and concerns. I do think the atmosphere has been permanently changed over these events. I am going to miss this place and the awfully smart people I’d seen here. I honestly don’t know what you could say to make me stay and you never rescinded the moderation.

I had 759 visits to my Palisades RCP problem.

Come over and get the real story about the issues of day...instead of that Pablum from linked in. Some pretty big investigations going in Millstone of recent.

NRC CITES MILLSTONE UNIT 2 NUCLEAR PLANT

(The following is a reformatted version of a press release issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and received via electronic mail. The release was confirmed by the sender.)
NRC CITES MILLSTONE UNIT 2 NUCLEAR PLANT FOR INSPECTION FINDING OF LOW TO MODERATE SAFETY SIGNIFICANCE
   
The Millstone Unit 2 nuclear power plant will receive additional oversight from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as a result of a “White” (low to moderate safety significance) inspection finding that has now been finalized.
   
The inspection finding involves the failure of Millstone Unit 2 personnel to carry out their assigned roles and responsibilities and inadequate reactor power-level management during main turbine control valve testing. This contributed to an unanticipated reactor power increase, from 88 to 96 percent of rated thermal power, on Feb. 12, 2011.
   
An NRC team identified the finding during a Special Inspection conducted from Feb. 22 through April 14, 2011, at Millstone Unit 2, which is located in Waterford, Conn., and operated by Dominion Nuclear Connecticut, Inc. The Special Inspection was initiated in response to the unintended reactor power change.“While the NRC did not identify any impacts on plant safety due to the Feb. 12th event, the agency holds control room operators to the highest standards,” NRC Region I Administrator Bill Dean said. “This inspection finding signals the need for plant personnel to step back and learn from this event in order to prevent it from occurring again.”

US NRC launches special inspection at Dominion's Millstone-3

Washington (Platts)--3Feb2014/606 pm EST/2306 GMT

A five-member team from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has begun a special inspection at Dominion's Millstone-3 nuclear power unit in Waterford, Connecticut, to investigate "repetitive problems" with a pump in the reactor's safety system, the agency said Monday.

NRC said in a statement that the inspection at the 1,276-MW unit "will focus on a turbine-driven auxiliary feedwater pump" that is part of one of several systems that can provide cooling water to the reactor's steam generators.

"We have witnessed problems involving this safety-related component stretching back to last May," NRC Region I Administrator William Dean said in the statement. "The fact that these issues have occurred on multiple occasions despite repeated efforts to repair this component has prompted us to take a closer look at the situation."

Note: It sure looks like Madalina has shifted me to a approving comment mode or worst. Or it could be issues with my computer or with Linkedin itself slowing down. But this has been going on for days so I find that unlikely.

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May 29: Waterford — About 420 of the 1,080 workers at the Millstone Power Station will decide in a two-day election next week whether to unionize.
 
John Fernandes, business manager for Local 457 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said today that the vote will take place at the power station on Tuesday and Wednesday. Operators, electricians, plant equipment operators and instrument and controls technicians are among the categories of plant workers deemed eligible to vote by the National Labor Relations Board.
Fernandes said workers need the protection of a contract that union representation would provide. IBEW represents workers at Connecticut Light & Power and Yankee Gas as well as at Norwich Public Utilties and the NRG Energy plant in Montville. A previous effort by IBEW to unionize Millstone workers in 2002, a year after Dominion became the owner of the plant, failed to win enough votes.
 
“Since Dominion’s taken over, a host of benefits have been taken away,” Fernandes said.
There have been changes in how pensions are calculated, pay differentials for various shifts, vacation allocations, retiree health benefits and overtime, among other areas, he said.
 
Ken Holt, spokesman for Millstone, said Dominion maintains that a union is not needed.
“Dominion respects the rights of its employees to organize,” he said, “but we think the best way to move forward at Millstone is in a non-union environment where we work together on an individual and personal basis.”
 
Workers at Dominion’s two nuclear power plants in Virginia are unionized.　

Played them like a fiddle. Got the Millstone Coalition to e-mail Dave before the end of discussion…they were utterly asleep. But not Dave. I wanted her to call around to the local media to get them interested. We talked before and she remembered who I was. Radiation leak and whistleblower gets them all the time…but you have to stay within the facts…

This is an example how the greatest democracy on the planet works….

Both reactors go down together for first time  

Waterford — Millstone Power Station remained off-line Tuesday as operators worked to complete cleanup and repairs of two pressurized tanks for cooling water that ruptured after the unexpected shutdown of both reactors Sunday due to a power failure. 

Millstone spokesman Ken Holt said this is the first time both reactors have had to shut down simultaneously. The outage occurred about 7 a.m. Sunday after a short in the transmission lines that supply power to operate plant systems even as the reactors produce power and send it out onto the grid.

Holt said that the problem originated in a relay switch on the Connecticut Light & Power transmission lines and that power was restored by noon Sunday. But Millstone 2 and 3 remain offline as crews repair damage that occurred in the aftermath of the outage and analyze exactly what happened and any lessons that can be learned, he said. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was notified of an unusual event, the lowest of four levels of emergency classification.

"We want to understand why we lost offsite power," Holt said. "We called in people over the holiday weekend to come in. Our equipment and operators responded as they were trained to."

During the shutdown, emergency diesel generators automatically supplied power to keep reactor safety systems operating.

Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said Millstone crews will have to clean up contaminated water that leaked from the ruptured tanks, as well as repair the pressurized tanks.

"We are continuing to review the company's actions and are considering whether the event warrants a more detailed inspection," he said.

In a Preliminary Notification issued Tuesday on the shutdown, the NRC said the loss of offsite power caused an "extended loss of instrument air" and "complicated the recovery actions." Monitors at the plant indicate normal levels of radiation at the site of the leaks, the notification said.

David Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the water that leaked had low levels of radioactivity and is "not much danger to workers or the public." Still, he said, the fact that two leaks occurred in two different buildings in Unit 3 during the shutdown is cause for concern.

"A relatively uncomplicated event became relatively complicated," Lochbaum said. "There were things that occurred that shouldn't have happened."

He said it is not yet clear whether the problems were the result of equipment failures, design flaws, gaps in operator training or from operators not following proper procedures. While this is the first time both reactors have had to shut down at the same time at Millstone, multiple shutdowns have occurred four or five times this year at other nuclear power stations across the country, he said.

Essentially, he said, the incident revealed that there are "holes" in Millstone's safety net systems. 

Dominion has a reputation for doing thorough analysis of shutdown and safety incidents and learning from any mistakes that are uncovered, Lochbaum said.

"That's something Dominion does well," he said.
 j.benson@theday.com

 
Off the grid for 6 hours! 

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - A malfunctioning relay has been identified as the cause of a weekend power outage at Connecticut’s nuclear plant, which supplies half of all power in the state and 12 percent throughout New England, a spokesman said Tuesday.

The Millstone Power Station is still not operating though power has been restored. Officials don’t know yet when operations will resume and it will have to go through many steps before it does.Ken Holt, a spokesman for the Millstone plant in Waterford, said the culprit was a relay on a transmission line that carries power to and from the Waterford plant.

“It didn’t do what it’s supposed to do,” he said.

An “unusual event,” the lowest of four levels of emergency classification used by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, was declared at 7:15 a.m. Sunday.

The plant’s emergency diesel generators activated and powered safety systems. Electrical power was restored several hours after it failed at the plant, owned by Dominion Resources Inc.

The outage, which affected both units at the plant, was Millstone’s first, Holt said.

ISO-New England, which runs the region’s grid, operates with a daily margin of reserve of about 2,200 to 2,600 megawatts for the possibility that plants could lose power, spokeswoman Marcia Blomberg said.

“We could lose resources and we routinely manage through unexpected and unplanned resource outages,” she said.

One megawatt powers about 1,000 homes.

No emergency actions were needed and the reliability of the region’s high-voltage power grid was maintained, Blomberg said.

Frank Poirot, a spokesman for Connecticut Light & Power, said the relay problem was tracked to equipment at an electrical substation and the results of a detailed investigation are not expected for a month.

Dominion, ISO-New England and CL&P; are looking at what caused the equipment to fail and the broader impact on the system at Millstone, he said. 

 

Think of what a dinosaur....obsolete... that switchyard panel (all the relays and detectors are) is, as it took them 6 hours or more to discover it was a relay...it wasn’t immediately self-identifying.

WATERFORD, Connecticut — A spokesman for the Millstone Power Station nuclear plant says a malfunctioning relay caused the loss of power over the weekend.

UNUSUAL EVENT DUE TO LOSS OF OFFSITE POWER

At 0702 EDT on 5/25/14, Millstone Units 2 and 3 experienced a loss of offsite power and subsequent trip of both units. An Unusual Event was declared by Millstone Units 2 and 3 at 0715 EDT.

Power is currently being supplied to all emergency busses by the emergency diesel generators. Offsite power is not available.

At this time, it appears that the loss of offsite power is due to a localized issue in the Millstone switchyard. The surrounding areas were not affected.

A decision was made to take the NRC to monitoring mode at 0749 EDT with Region 1 in the lead.

Notified DHS SWO, FEMA Ops Center, NICC Watch Officer, DOE Ops Center, USDA Ops Center, HHS Ops Center, and Nuclear SSA via email.

* * * UPDATE FROM MICHAEL CICCONE TO CHARLES TEAL AT 1330 EDT ON 5/25/14 * * *

All EDGs have been secured and offsite power has been restored.

The licensee is reporting the loss of two stack radiation monitors - 8168 and 8169. This is reportable under 10CFR50.72(b)(3)(xiii).

Notified R1DO (Gray), R1DRA (Lew), NRR EO (Kokajko), IRD MOC (Grant).

* * * UPDATE FROM MICHAEL CICCONE TO DANIEL MILLS AT 1548 EDT * *

At 1414 EDT the licensee terminated the Unusual Event.

The complicated shutdown with the loss of the instrument air...the media never caught that. It is like bringing home groceries by riding a bicycle with one leg.
 

Instrument air should be considered a primary safety system. It usually is not considered a safety system to save pennies... It is the motive force to a lot of important valves.

I wonder if a special inspection is around the corner with this guys....

So they had a radiation leak...

UNUSUAL EVENT DUE TO LOSS OF OFFSITE POWER

At 0702 EDT on 5/25/14, Millstone Units 2 and 3 experienced a loss of offsite power and subsequent trip of both units. An Unusual Event was declared by Millstone Units 2 and 3 at 0715 EDT.

Power is currently being supplied to all emergency busses by the emergency diesel generators. Offsite power is not available.

At this time, it appears that the loss of offsite power is due to a localized issue in the Millstone switchyard. The surrounding areas were not affected.

A decision was made to take the NRC to monitoring mode at 0749 EDT with Region 1 in the lead.

Notified DHS SWO, FEMA Ops Center, NICC Watch Officer, DOE Ops Center, USDA Ops Center, HHS Ops Center, and Nuclear SSA via email.

* * * UPDATE FROM MICHAEL CICCONE TO DANIEL MILLS AT 1330 EDT * * 

"The loss of offsite power was due to one main line coming into the plant shorting to ground. Emergency plan procedures have been implemented, natural circulation has been established, and the plant is stable. Offsite electrical power has been restored to both Unit 2 and Unit 3. Emergency diesel generators have been secured, and plant equipment has been restored to a normal line up.

"Extended loss of instrument air following the loss of offsite power complicated the recovery actions. The normal reactor coolant system letdown flow path was not able to be established. This resulted in the rupture of the pressurizer relief tank rupture disk inside containment. The relief valve on the volume control tank lifted when restoring normal letdown. This caused the primary drains transfer tank to overflow into the auxiliary building. This overflow path has been isolated. Supplementary leakage collection system radiation monitor HVR-RE19B, and auxiliary building normal ventilation radiation monitor HVR-RE10B, are indicating normal levels."

Notified R1DO (Gray), R1DRA (Lew), NRR EO (Kokajko), IRD MOC (Grant).

* * * UPDATE FROM MICHAEL CICCONE TO DANIEL MILLS AT 1548 EDT * * 

At 1414 EDT the licensee terminated the Unusual Event.

Notified R1DO (Gray), R1DRA (Lew), NRR EO (Kokajko), IRD MOC (Grant), DHS SWO, FEMA Ops Center, NICC Watch Officer, DOE Ops Center, USDA Ops Center, HHS Ops Center, and Nuclear SSA via email.

 

May 26: This is a example with how captured the media has become. They didn’t millstone was actually in a UE.  Well, a hollowed out media might more explain it.

A LOOP tremendously jacks up the chance of a meltdown...

I think it is a mistake they didn’t declare a UE…a unusual event. 

Just saying, what does it mean when they say a electrical short cause the Loss of offsite Power (LOOP) event. They have four or five high voltage transmission lines coming into their site. One shorting line is never suppose to trip a plant let alone the whole site. Protective devices are supposed to immediately isolate the fault and the rest of the lines should be able to handle the load of both plants.

I think it is a mistake they didn’t declare a UE…a unusual event…

Just saying, what does it mean when they say a electrical short cause the Loss of offsite Power (LOOP) event. They have four or five high voltage transmission lines coming into their plant. One shorting line is never suppose to trip a plant let alone the whole site. Protective devices are supposed to immediately isolate the fault and the rest of the lines should be able to handle the load of both plants.
Six hours without power....don't forget how vunerable the Pigrim plant has become with lost of lines and site blackouts, caused by the system not spending money on the lines going to their plant.

Power restored. This is terrible PR.

Something "big big" was going on in the grid an hour before the two plant trip.

WATERFORD, Connecticut — Federal officials say Connecticut's nuclear plant in Waterford has lost power, with an electrical short likely to blame.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the two reactors at Millstone Power Station shut down at about 7 a.m. Sunday. Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the regulatory agency, says Connecticut Light & Power determined that a short in a power line is the likely culprit.

A spokeswoman says CL&P is investigating and would not confirm the cause of the outage.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says automatic trips of the reactors were uncomplicated, safety systems functioned properly and public health and safety are not affected.

Diesel generators at the plant, which is owned by Dominion Resources Inc., activated and are providing power to safety systems.

A spokesman for Millstone said it's in a "safe and stable condition."