Junk Plant Grand Gulf: Nuclear Industry Becoming Increasingly Chaotic

Update Nov 18

SOB, I am a prophet. Why aren't people paying me millions of dollars? Did I predict they would be shutdown over operation's department problems? I believe the long stream of shutdowns, down powers and plant chaos had exhausted and numbed the operations department.

"These poor control room operators. Like I said, this is how the engineers and NRC screws the licensed operator with setting up this plant with poorly maintained equipment."

Junk Plant Grand Gulf: Delay Startup to Fix Safety Culture

Originally published on 7/20

Update 7/21

This is way cool. Grand Gulf just started up last night. It was about a 21 day preventable outage.  I'll be watching these guys closely now.

***It's like a junk unreliable 3 year old $100,000 dollar Cadillac CTS-V. It is now the largest single plant in the USA?*** 

*Call me stupid, but why has Grand Gulf been down in the extreme of the summer? Its where they can make the most money? But they are a regulated plant. They have been down for weeks. You don't have a scheduled outage during the middle of the southern summer.
Of course, its a increasingly unreliable Entergy plant. It's Mississippi's only nuclear plant.  

Basically for months or more River Bend and Grand gulf has been alternating each other with scrams and power restriction. It is a disgrace for the industry. Normally a plant gets funded to maximize capacity factor. Can they make more money someway by funding a plant to a 90% capacity factor?

Updated: What is this saying below?

*Scram 6/17/2016-6/19

*Scram 7/30-?

6/17 scram: what a horrible month for Grand Gulf. Basically two scrams 13 days apart. What a industry embarrassment. Look at all the big component not properly maintained...failing and causing multiple scams in a short period of time. The last scam causing a 20 day unscheduled outage. More than one big component failing in one scram. These poor control room operators. Like I said, this is how the engineers and NRC screws the licensed operator with setting up this plant with poorly maintained equipment. Guys, this in the future of the industry in front of us. They are wrecking the nuclear industry!!!

AUTOMATIC REACTOR SCRAM DURING TESTING

"During planned stop and control valve testing, two main turbine high pressure stop valves closed instead of the expected one (stop valve 'B'). This caused the main turbine control valves, power, reactor pressure to swing and a division 2 half SCRAM. Control rods were inserted to reduce power and the power swings. At 0257 [CDT] the reactor automatically SCRAMMED. Reactor SCRAM, Turbine Trip [procedures] ONEPs and EP-2 were entered. Reactor water level was stabilized at 34 inches narrow range on startup level control and reactor pressure stabilized at 884 psig using main turbine bypass valves. No other safety related systems actuated and all systems performed as expected."

The plant is in its normal shutdown electrical lineup using normal feedwater and turbine bypass valves for decay heat removal. Reactor pressure is slowly trending down. The licensee is investigating the cause of the second stop valve shutting.

The licensee notified the NRC Resident Inspector.

6/30 scam: leading to a plus 20 day outage.

In the industry's history of loss of service or instrument air, this causes plants to spin widely out of control. It has traditionally caused very expensive plant damage. Most plants have a diesel generator air compressor stationed outside the turbine building for just this reason. It automatically starts on low air pressure and saves the asses of the control room employees. Is Entergy abandoning Grand Gulf. The normal air compressors are not maintained as safety related equipment. Basically they lost control of neutron flux shape in the core and had to scam for safety. I wonder if they just let it go without operator action what would have happened. Aren't plants design for hands off operation for the first 10 minutes of a scam?

Did they have a spare transformer on site or was one readily available? Or did they have to order one from China?  

*Oh what a disgrace, they just upgraded the plant to the tune of hundreds of millions to a billion dollars. And they got a much poorer plant reliability and capacity factor. What a junk/ drunk billion dollar nuclear plant upgrade :) 

MULTIPLE VALID SPECIFIED SYSTEM ACTUATIONS DUE TO LOSS OF SERVICE TRANSFORMER 21

"On June 30, 2016 at 1715 CDT, Grand Gulf Nuclear Station (GGNS) experienced an electrical power supply loss from Service Transformer 21 which resulted in power supply being lost to Division 2 (16AB Bus) and Division 3 (17AC Bus) ESF buses. This resulted in a valid actuation of Division 2 and Division 3 Diesel Generators on bus under voltage. They both automatically started and energized their respective ESF buses as designed.

"During this event, the loss of power to the Division 2 (16AB Bus) resulted in a Division 2 RPS bus power loss, which actuated a Div 2 RPS half SCRAM signal.

"The power loss also resulted in a loss of the Instrument Air pressure resulting in some Control Rod Scram Valves to drift open. This in turn caused the Scram Discharge Volume to fill to the point where a Div 1 RPS half SCRAM signal was initiated from Scram Discharge Volume level high on Channel 'A'. This resulted in a valid full RPS Reactor SCRAM while not critical. Instrument Air pressure was restored and the SCRAM signal was reset at 1733 CDT.

"Appropriate off normal event procedures were entered to mitigate the transient. No ECCS initiation signals were reached. All safety systems performed as expected.

"GGNS was in Mode 4, Cold Shutdown, with MSIVs closed at the time of the event. Reactor water level was maintained in the normal water level band by Control Rod Drive system throughout this event. RHR 'A' was maintained in Shutdown Cooling operation and it was not affected by this event."

The licensee notified the NRC Resident Inspector.

That is the problem with the philosophy of spending all your money on a big power uprate. Then you have to deal with all the obsolete components breakdowns you never spent money on. The typical Entergy uprate only changes out a small proportion of the components in the plant. It like throwing money away. VY and Fort Calhoun did the same thing and they had to quickly permanently shutdown because the plant then became unprofitable.   

The Grand Gulf Behemoth

In fall 2012, work was completed on the extended power uprate project at Entergy's Grand Gulf Nuclear Generating Station, near Port Gibson, Mississippi. The project increased the energy output of the plant by more than 13 percent, making the Grand Gulf Nuclear Generating Station the most powerful nuclear reactor in the United States and one of the most powerful in the entire world with a total capacity of 1443 MW.
CB&I (then The Shaw Group Inc.) won the EPC contract for the EPU project and oversaw most of the work, with the exception of the steam dryer and turbine components. The uprate of the BWR plant involved replacing the heat exchanges, main feedwater heaters, moisture separator reheaters and main transformers, as well as enhancing the plant's cooling capacity. The main generator and high-pressure turbine rotor were both replaced as well, which was completed by Siemens.
Uprates have become a popular method of expanding nuclear power in a cost effective and efficient way. According to the NRC, the regulatory body has approved uprates adding up to 6,862MW of electricity generating capacity in the United States, equivalent to constructing a handful of brand new reactors from the ground up. -Ed.