Wednesday, March 01, 2017

Junk Pilgrim Plant: Defective Component Engineering Musical Chairs

What going on for decades with these valves... is massive public fraud. The valves would perform poorly or leak…they would tell the NRC and public they are going to remove the valves and replace the defective design with a big redesigned valve. They would tinker with replacing the seat surface with some new material or change the dimension on some insignificant component. They would never fully test the new redesign. They never had any intention to change positively the characteristic of the valve. This says a lot about the NRC. Then they would put in the so called newly redesign valve, it would fail similarly or worse than the old design. It was just a scam to give the appearance they fixed the problems with the first defective design.

Prior to 2010 Pilgrim had notorious two stage safety relief valves (in the plant now. They decided to replace their two stage safety relief valves with even more defective three stage valves. Basically within a month of first installation, with the new three stage SRVs, one began to leak. I picked up on this early and made many complaints to the NRC. They had horrendous leakage and other performance problem leading to the 2015 blizzard where two valves failed. Seems there was so called test stand damage to all the valves. I conservatively think all four valves were inop since first installation. It would have been a much more severe violation if the NRC agreed with me. Damage to the internals is a much better indicator of valve failure than the miss-operation of the valve.

I believe the NRC allowed Pilgrim to operate post blizzard to the outage(a month or two) with  the three stage valves. Based on no ability to have confidence with the three stage, Pilgrim replace their three stage with two stage Safety relief valves in this outage after the 2015 blizzard.

I told the NRC, how can you dopes allow Pilgrim to operate with the two stage SRVs, when Pilgrim's opinion of the two stage was so poor in 2010 license amendment request (LAR)...to OK the three stage ending with a permanent shutdown decision shortly after the 2015 blizzard. Check out Pilgrim’s the bad mouthing of the two stage in 2010 (these valves are in the plant today).
Proposed License Amendment to Technical Specifications: Revised Technical Specification for Setpoint and Setpoint Tolerance Increases for Safety Relief Valves (SRV) and Spring Safety Valves (SSV), and Related Changes
March 15, 2010

The SRVs require replacement because the current two-stage Target Rock SRVs have been unreliable performers with respect to leaking while in-service and the subject of setpoint drift. SRV pilot valve leakage has led to multiple plant shutdowns and the setpoint drift problem resulted in exceeding current TS limits and numerous Licensee Event Reports (LERs). It has been determined that pilot valve leakage is due to low simmer margin and high as-found lift setpoints are due to corrosion bonding at the pilot valve disc/seat. To address current SRV performance problems, Entergy has performed extensive investigations and feasibility studies. The preferred option for correcting these problems is to replace all SRVs and SSVs during the next refueling outage. RFO-1 8 is currently planned to start on or about April 17, 2011.
This popped up in the last inspection report. I called Pilgrim’s inspectors…they told me they took it out because it was leaking. No one but the NRC and Pilgrim new it was leaking. There was no requirement for a complete explanation with ether the NRC or Pilgrim. You get it? A component(s) who failed effectively forcing the permanent shutdown of a nuclear plant, who fails again, there is no requirement to report on the new failure. The whole system is rigged.       
Remember this is the two stage and it’s in the current inspection report.
Replacement of safety relief valve ‘B’ on October 6, 2016
What I found hysterically funny from the dopey NRC, because of the leaky and poorly designed two stage, Pilgrim is going to reinstalled the three stage into the last operating period of the plant this spring's last outage. Do you think there are doing it because they got perfect proof the three stage SRVs are fixed?    

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