$ 33 million is mere pennies for these guys...it like the cost of a hair cut.
An extended repair shutdown at PSEG's Salem Unit 2 nuclear plant helped shave $33 million from companywide earnings during the second quarter of this year, with profits off 36 percent overall compared with the same period last year.Failed Bolts Bedevil a Nuclear Plant
Despite the result, Public Service Enterprise Group Chairman Ralph Izzo on Wednesday said the diversified company still expects to finish the year with operating earnings as high as $1.395 billion, with its activities "well-positioned to generate solid earnings and fresh cash flow."
Net income for the quarter ending June 30 was $212 million, down from $333 million last year, with income of 49 cents per share for the second quarter of 2014 compared with 48 cents last year and an estimate of 52 cents for this year.
PSEG, one of the nation's 10 largest electric suppliers, is a New Jersey-based energy holding company with four operating units and $30 billion in assets. Its units include PSEG Power, which owns the Hope Creek Nuclear plant and a majority share of the Salem Units 1 and 2 reactors, all on Artificial Island along the New Jersey side of the Delaware River southeast of Port Penn
Neil Sheehan
Public Affairs Officer Region I
Truly novel issues are, generally speaking, few and far between at U.S. nuclear power plants. Whether it’s a specific type of pipe that springs a leak or an electrical relay that goes on the fritz, chances are good that the problem has been experienced before somewhere across the nation’s fleet of commercial power reactors during the many decades they have been in operation.
An issue that has drawn attention at the Salem Unit 2 nuclear power plant, a pressurized-water reactor in southern New Jersey, has to do with the failure of small bolts contained in four reactor coolant pumps. The bolts, measuring 1 inch in diameter and 4 inches in length, are used to secure a turning vane inside the pumps.
Ok, the huge events the NRC reports on with inspection reports. Say a huge blade flung off a impeller that can be seen up on the control room recorders and like another huge impeller blade stuck between the vessel and core flow shirt like in this past outage at palisades. All the other rather small broken blades or recirculation damaged discovered in a outage inspection is not reported to the public. Or operating outside the manufactures recommendations are not reported on. The plant does a lot of internal investigation and documentation…but the NRC never reports on these events until a big incident arrives on scene that embarrasses everyone.These pumps stand about 30 feet tall and provide forced flow of coolant, or water, through the reactor to transport heat from the fuel to the steam generators. The steam generators, in turn, make use of that heat by converting it to steam. The steam is then piped to the turbine to spin it and generate electricity.
(This is the NRC blog picture...it is not the Salem pump with defuser. It is the wrong picture and it doesn't show a diffuser or turning vane.)
As can be seen in the graphic, water is drawn upward through the suction nozzle at the bottom of the pump via an impeller. The turning vane directly above the impeller then redirects the water toward an opening on the side, from which it flows into the reactor vessel.
When a refueling and maintenance outage began at the plant this spring and evaluation and maintenance work got under way, a number of turning vane boltheads were found in piping associated with one of the reactor coolant pumps and in the reactor vessel. (Similar discovery of these boltheads, albeit just a handful of them, had been observed in two prior outages.) Subsequent reviews, which have now included the examination of all of the pumps, have identified dozens of failed or sheared turning vane bolts in all of them.
Each pump has 20 such bolts. (The arrow shows the approximate location of the bolts.) A majority of the failed boltheads, though separated from the bolt shanks, remained in place thanks to mechanical restraints or tack welds.
While this is not a significant safety concern in terms of potentially causing a reactor core damage accident, there are several related operational issues. For one, the boltheads are considered foreign material that could have an adverse impact on reactor coolant system performance if they were to impact key components inside the system. For another, the turning vane could conceivably drop down and come into contact with the impeller and impede or halt its functioning.
The cause of the bolts’ failure remains under review, but one possibility is stress-corrosion cracking. Indeed, the NRC issued Information Notices to the industry in the 1990s regarding this phenomenon.
A 1994 Information Notice put out by the agency was designed to make the industry aware of stress-corrosion cracking that caused turning vane cap screws to fail at the Millstone Unit 3 nuclear power plant. Also, a 1990 Information Notice discussed the failure of turning vane bolts at a foreign reactor.
In a 1995 Information Notice, the NRC made plant owners aware of the loss of integrity for bolt-locking devices in the turning vanes of reactor coolant pumps at the Seabrook nuclear power plant but for a different reason: flow-induced vibrations.
PSEG, the owner and operator of the Salem and Hope Creek plants, will have to not only repair the Salem Unit 2 pumps but evaluate what went wrong. For now, the plant remains out of service while this work is taking place. NRC inspectors and specialists will closely follow these activities.
One area for consideration will be whether the problem could have been avoided based on previously available information.
(Note: I believe diffusers and turning vanes are the same thing)
My Response on the NRC Blog:
Mike MulliganJune 26, 2014 at 11:49 am
Well, another question, why didn’t the NRC have the skills and education to figure out the importance of this emergent new information and use their influence to head off a worsening situation? I do get it with the NRC and these utilities with their nothing-ever-matters philosophies and every egregious and unprofessional behavior is always safe. Why can’t the agency use their influence and power to head off events like this for the good of the nation and the rate payers? Why is their so much unnecessary secrecy with RCP?
I request all plants with identical and similar pumps to be immediately shutdown for inspection…
What is the worst sin in this deal, this has been a cover-up! Events like this aren’t reportable with the RCP and recirc pumps and disclosed to the public. Why are problems like this so secret? All broken parts like this and inappropriate maintenance issues should be in a LER and discussed thoroughly in a inspection report. This doesn’t happen now and you know it! The Palisades PCP broken impeller pieces and blades flung all around in the coolant for over decades is an example of this also.
By the way, we are wondering if the broken blades in Palisades and the shutdown for the seal job ongoing now are related? What pump is the seal job? Is the seal job the same pump who was found with two huge missing impeller blade pieces this last outage?