Confirmation Entergy And Grand Gulf Is Junk

In my discussions with the NRC over Grand Gulf, they admitted collectively Entergy's Nuclear Fleet as a whole is under special and intense added scrutiny over a host of operational shortcomings...

Power Engineering

Grand Gulf staying offline until January

Meanwhile, Entergy officials said during the call that the regulated Grand Gulf nuclear plant in Mississippi probably won’t return to service before early 2017.

The unit was shut down Sept. 9 because it wasn’t measuring up to Entergy’s internal standards for “operational excellence,” company executives said during the call.

The Grand Gulf maintenance outage was chiefly trigged by a pump repair, and the plant will take extra time before reconnecting to the grid to evaluate operations, an Entergy spokesperson noted following the call.

Over the past calendar year, Grand Gulf has experienced outage several times for required maintenance. “Before ending the current maintenance outage, plant employees and leadership will take a deliberate and thorough review of processes, procedures and protocols to ensure we are operating to high standards,” the spokesperson said.

“The decision will ensure the needed maintenance and repairs can be fully made, and that worker knowledge and training are at high levels before returning to full operations. To provide the time we need to undertake this process, we anticipate that the unit will not return to service before mid-January 2017,” the Entergy spokesperson went on to say.

During the call, Denault said Entergy is increasing its investment in certain nuclear facilities in order to improve performance and improve the plants’ performance in the eyes of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).