Junk Plant Callaway: A Pattern of Not Fixing Problems Immediately

Popeye’s J. Wellington Wimpy "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today".

This cost them to shutdown. They blew three shots at fixing it. It started by not property torquing the flange nuts. How many screw-ups does it take to cost expensive unnecessary shutdown?

Right, they got some 5 million parts and components in this plants. If they got a global problem with their maintenence philosophy then the plant is heading towards a lot more costly shutdowns and it is going to impair safety. 

Think of how frustrated the whole staff is with their organization being so chaotic and disorganization.       

Description. On November 29, 2014, during a plant walkdown, the licensee identified boric acid buildup on the bolted flange downstream of valve BBV0400, a drain valve located on the auxiliary spray header. The boric acid corrosion control program owner entered this into the boric acid corrosion control program database. On January 31, February 13, March 11, April 15, and May 21, 2015, the licensee performed follow-up walkdowns on this flange and identified additional boric acid buildup. The licensee entered this issue into their corrective action program on March 2, 2015, after the third identification of boric acid buildup on the flange.

On March 2, 2015, the licensee initiated Job 15001126 to clean the residue off the flange and stop the source of the boric acid leakage. The licensee initially planned to work the job on September 23, 2015. On May 27, 2015, due to questions with personnel safety, the licensee rescheduled the job to December 3, 2015, when the environment inside containment would be cooler.  

On July 22, 2015, leakage at the flange located downstream of valve BBV0400 increased to a rate of 1.2 gallons per minute which is in excess of the requirements of Technical Specifications 3.4.13, "RCS [Reactor Coolant System] Operational Leakage," for unidentified leakage. This required the licensee to shut down and cool down the plant to repair the leak. 

They put this off once to many times. Basically big systems like turbine control and the feed water control system are ageing out. The licencee is continuously botching the replacement job over and over again...   


Wait till I discuss their new special inspection with reversing engineering components on their aged out and obsolete feed water control system.

Description. On January 31, 2015, while performing turbine control testing, the turbine unexpectedly lowered electrical output from approximately 1250 MWe to approximately 780 MWe. This resulted in the condenser steam dumps opening due to a primary to secondary power mismatch. Operations personnel stabilized the plant and restored steam flow through the main turbine control valves, which allowed the condenser steam dumps to close as expected. The plant stabilized in a normal lineup at approximately 60 percent power. About an hour after the plant was stabilized, the turbine load starting reducing a second time. Operations personnel lowered the load limit setpoint until the load limit was limiting turbine load. The plant reached stable conditions at approximately 53 percent power.

On February 1, 2015, the licensee intentionally lowered power to approximately 46 percent power and placed the turbine control system in standby to support troubleshooting of the turbine control system. Troubleshooting identified intermittent noise in the load set circuitry caused by a +22 V permanent magnet generator power supply and a high resistance connection on the power supply bus due to the bad seating of a load limit and load set runback card.

The licensee’s investigation revealed that a decision was made in 2005 to upgrade the system to a digital platform because of aging and obsolescence of the system components. The system life at that time was approximately 25 years (2008) and technical justification was given to continue using the system for up to 30 years (through 2013). In 2012, the unit reliability team decided to delay the digital upgrade from the spring 2013 refueling outage, to the spring 2016 refueling outage, which effectively extended the operating life to 33 years. The decision to delay the design change was based on the resource requirements of the project and probability of system failure. This decision was made with the knowledge of the upgrade project engineer, but communication with the system engineer to ensure his awareness of the delay was lacking.

Procedure APA-ZZ-00549, Appendix E, “Unit Reliability Team Operations,” Revision 7, step 4.9.8 states, “If implementation of an approved solution is delayed, URT Chair: DIRECT the issue Owner/Project Sponsor to determine IF any intermediate or compensatory measures should be put in place to ensure continued reliability until the solution can be implemented.” 

In February 2014, the system engineer presented compensatory actions to the outage leadership team for inclusion in the fall 2014 refueling outage. This request to add the actions was denied by the outage leadership team due to lack of resources. The outage leadership team did not discuss the need for the compensatory measures with the unit reliability team to acquire the necessary resources. After that time, the upgrade was deferred to the spring 2019 refueling outage, effectively extending the operating life to 36 years without identification of any compensatory measures to reduce the probability of a failure in the plant.

Corrective actions include implementing a bridging strategy to lower the risk to the safe and reliable operation of the turbine control system until the system is replaced with a new digital control system. The bridging strategy includes replacing power supplies and cards within the system to increase the overall reliability of the system.