A River Bend situation at Wolf Creek

I called in a NRC special inspection this winter (2015)to River Bend over bad reactor level control after a scram and apparent problems with their feed regulating valve control.

If the NRC did my style of thorough special inspection at Wolf Creek in early 2015 on emerging operator training and simulator fidelity deficiencies...Wolf Creek's violations this inspection cycle wouldn't have occurred.

I'd seen the scale of Wolf Creeks problems in Fed 2015 and wanted the NRC to hammer them. Wanted the agency to reset the facility to at least a average facility. The agency in Jan 2015 needed to make Wolf Creek knees tremble with fear.   

Feb 13, 20154: Why is Wolf Creek In Trouble II?

“You are seeing the worst of the NRC here. So the simulator was inaccurate and the safety knowledge of the licensed operators was really poor. They bifurcated the depth of the problem or diluted the magnitude the problems by separating these problems between two independent inspection reports. I am certain the NRC seen the inadequacies of the licensed operators training and the inadequacies of accurate simulator modeling at the same time. They strategized to separate the issues to minimize the violations for their buddies.

If they would have hit these guys with these two problems at the same time, jacked up the violation level...threw it into the special inspection...these guys would have gotten the message to clean up their act really hard. Everyone else would have seen this saying, we can't let this happen to us.

Better yet, failed training and shut them down for a month or so for retraining...this wouldn't be seen in the nuclear industry for a decade or more.”

River Bend blindly had:

massive leaking FRVs. 

They never set up their feed water system right post construction.

With large scale simulator problem modeling the feed system.  

Check out how closely related Wolf Creeks problems are to River Bend? 

December 8, 2015

EA-15-139 

SUBJECT:WOLF CREEK GENERATING STATION – NRC INSPECTION REPORT 05000482/2015009

Green. The inspectors reviewed a self-revealing Green non-cited violation of 10 CFR Part 50, Appendix B, Criterion V, “Instructions, Procedures, and Drawings,” because the licensee did not assure the procedures for reactor startup were appropriate to the circumstances. Specifically, prior to May 3, 2015, the licensee failed to include adequate instructions for transferring feedwater flow from the main feedwater regulating valve bypass valves to the main feedwater regulating valves in Procedure GEN 00 003, “Hot Standby to Minimum Load.” As a result, operations personnel did not properly control feedwater flow during a reactor startup, which led to a plant trip on May 3, 2015. The licensee entered this condition into their corrective action program as Condition Reports 96064 and 100583. The corrective action taken to restore compliance was to revise Procedure GEN 00-003 to update the process for transferring main feedwater control from the main feedwater regulating valve bypass valves to the main feedwater regulating valves, including the monitoring of necessary parameters steam flow and feedwater flow.

Green. The inspectors reviewed a self-revealing Green non-cited violation of 10 CFR 55.46(c)(1), “Plant referenced Simulators,” due to the licensee’s failure to maintain a plant-referenced simulator used for the administration of the operating test such that it would demonstrate expected plant response to operator input and to normal, transient, and accident conditions to which the simulator has been designed to respond. Specifically, until June 13, 2015, the licensee failed to maintain the simulator consistent with actual plant response when using the main feed regulating valves in manual control. The licensee entered this condition into their corrective action program as Condition Report 96252. The corrective action taken to restore compliance was to change the simulator modeling of the main feedwater regulating valve controller to match the installed plant controllers.