Junk Plant Fitzparick: Fuel Failures

update Nov 10

So why has Fitz been down to 75% power since the fuel leak down power last weekend? It has been down for 5 or 6 days? It is highly abnormal!!!

So what changed? They were heading to a near death experience, then Energy sold the plant to Exelon.  I don't remember them having fuel damage problems before. Outage in Jan 2017.

Fretting... small metal parts from the outage circulating in the coolant.

Three showing up at the same time, abnormal. Are they in the same area of the core?

Did they change the fuel supplier?  

Radiation from damaged fuel rods leads Oswego nuke plant to power down
Updated Nov 7, 4:14 PM; Posted Nov 7, 3:31 PM

The FitzPatrick nuclear power plant in Scriba, Oswego County.(NRC)

By Douglass Dowty

ddowty@syracuse.com,

syracuse.com

Oswego, NY -- Officials at the FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant near Oswego are investigating why fuel rods in the reactor's core are leaking radiation, according to the federal government.

It's a not considered an emergency -- only three of the plant's roughly 33,500 fuel rods are leaking -- but it could spread contaminated water to other parts of the plant, said U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan.

So FitzPatrick's parent, Exelon Corp., powered down the facility over the past few days to isolate the damaged fuel rods, Sheehan said.

The plant was down to 58 percent capacity over the weekend before ramping up to 82 percent capacity today. It's on the way back to full capacity, Sheehan said.

An Exelon spokeswoman called it a minor problem.

"Operators have suppressed a minor defect in a fuel bundle using control rods, which

This is going to be a very costly event. It is going to make the core and all their components more costly with contamination. It slows down all the jobs with costly radiation precautions. Depending the type of leak, it could get much more costly with a much bigger leak. Preparing for the permanent shutdown many years prior too, they might have shifted the core flux so they could use up as much uranium as possible upon last shutdown. Now they had to rearrange the core back to normal operation. It is a very complex operation not normally done. There just might be a error in that.   

will allow for reliable operation until the station's next refueling outage when the bundle can be replaced," said Tammy Holden, the company spokeswoman.

The NRC said that the leakage doesn't pose any health risk for the community: the water in contact with the damaged fuel rods is part of a closed system with filters that remove dangerous levels of contamination.

But Sheehan called it an "anomaly" that the company would need to address.

The rods themselves are 12 feet long and about the width of an index finger, Sheehan said.

FitzPatrick, like its Nine Mile Point neighbors, uses a nuclear reaction to heat up water, which then powers a turbine. It's the heated water that is prone to increased contamination from the damaged fuel rods.

But that water is scrubbed and sent back to the reactor core, not released into the environment, Sheehan said.

Exelon is in the process of isolating the leaking rods, which will then be taken out of service and replaced at the next refueling, which happens every 18 months to 2 years, Sheehan said.