Dead Ender Palisades: Losing NRC Faith in Science and Engineering over CDRM Leaks

This is what a plant looks like at end of life, when they are starving funding to the plant. Lot of equipment troubles showing up and losing employees prodigiously. What do we have about 10 plants in this condition is the USA? A big accident waiting to happen killing the rest of the industry.

Didn't they put in new CDRMs due to continuous leaks in around 2015. Check out my comments on this. Check out my comments below the article? Once President Trump came into power the NRC shutdown the "NRC's Blog". So they replace all but eight CRDMs in 2015. A CRDM replacement job is tremendously expensive and the radiation dose for the employees. Don't get me talking about titanium gonads protection for this job. Is the leak in the eight not replaced CRDMs in 2015...the the titanium gonad outage...or the rest of the CRDMs that were replaced. Is it a new CRDM or a old CRDMs. Basically the design of the reactor and the associated CRDMs was defective from day one of plant operation. It is a very old reactor. Palisades has the worst CRDM leak rate in the industry.         

An Inspector’s Perspective On the Control Rod Drive Mechanism Housing Flaws At Palisades 

Palisades maintenance outage underway

· By JIM DALGLEISH - Assistant Local News Editor
· 2 hrs ago

COVERT — The Palisades nuclear power plant is starting its second week of a repair outage, which comes in advance of a planned refueling outage, the plant and federal regulators reported.

Plant spokesman Nick Culp said Friday that operators shut down the reactor Oct. 13 for planned work on a degrading control rod drive seal.

However, “during the scheduled maintenance, an internal transformer fault occurred, resulting in the loss of power supply to several components,” Culp said. “At all times, the plant remained in a safe and stable condition. Palisades employees are working to replace the transformer. (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) inspectors were made aware of the planned shutdown and have been kept informed throughout.”

The NRC on Friday reported that the step-down transformer failed as crews tried to restart the reactor after the drive seal repair.

For proprietary reasons, Culp said, plant owner Entergy does not divulge when the plant will restart or if managers will roll the current outage into the refuelling outage. It will not say when the refuelling outage was to start.

“This maintenance project comes after 198 days of continuous safe operation and is reflective of our ongoing commitment to running the plant well,” Culp said in a statement. “... During the coming outage, Entergy will invest tens of millions of dollars in the plant’s safe and reliable operations.”

The fall refueling outage will be one of the last two before the plant shuts down in 2022, Culp said.