Palisades Safety Injection Refueling Water Tank 2.206

June 21, 2012: Request Emergency Palisades Shutdown


My old Feb 22, 2011 2.206, actually dating back to 2010.

"God help us all, can you see the problem with the repetitive nature of Entergy having the instincts to not the due proper inspections... to do it over and over again like a madman. They are laughing at us and the NRC because these employees and managers know we can't control them. The NRC has no ability to control Palisades...that is my god damned political statement to the NRC."

June 18, 2012

R. William Borchardt
Executive Director for Operations
US Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington, DC 20555-0001

Dear Mr. Borchardt,

 ThePoppersville Town Hall

RequestEmergency Palisades  Shutdown (Jan 10,2012)

Request Emergency Palisades shutdown (June18, 2012)

Feb 22, 2011 and Jan 10, 2012 2.206:   

“Subject 2.206: Request a emergency shutdown of Palisades because the Reactor Oversight Program is ineffective and Entergy has a documented history of a culture of falsification and thumbing their noses at reoccurring violations. It should be noted in this inspection period most of the fleet of Entergy’s plants are on fire and burning in the Gulf of Mexico with numerous NRC inspection findings including Grand Gulf, River Bend, Arkansas One and Cooper.

And we sit in the shadow the River Bend’s troublesome plant trip and the restart, then the subsequent shutdown with three leaking safety relief valves and Augment Inspection Team, how can you say there are not be systemic problems with Entergy? You had a short in a motor, then the first safety breaker relay failed to stop the fault. It was a cascade effect and other pieces of equipment were affected.  Is it just me with the nuclear industry, there has been a rash of recent electrical equipment and switchgear faults and shorts, and the first safety breakers and relays fails to operate and stop the massive short. If you want my opinion, the wires and electrical (switchgear, breakers and safety devices) will lead to a limiting accident before the pipes do. In truly Palisades nuclear plant biblical proportion,  the last River Bend’s NRC inspection uncovered nine violation. Theses guys are riddled with similar violation throughout the year, as their brother plant Palisades is. This is a systemic problem with Entergy and the NRc doesn’t have the power to control it before this company damages the nuclear industry.

Now we got repetitive electrical shorts in the VY Recirc MGs and heavy smoke in the reactor building. Got a assortment of states desperately trying to shutdown Entergy’s nuclear plants because nobody trust these guys. Unbelievable union troubles at the Pilgrim nuclear plant and rumors the union employees sabotage the plant by tripping it in the union action while the state of Massachusetts is trying to put hold on their relicencing. Massachusetts and Vermont are more persistent than me. It is a double hitter going on over there is New York  

The NRC is probably going to call the leaking Safety Injection Refueling Water tank (SIRW) shutdown a planned shutdown. Seeing how for a indeterminate amount of time, certainly before the last outage, they knew the tank was leaking and did nothing. They didn’t care the leaking 300,000 gal tank sits above the control room with all the invaluable instrumentation and all those electrical cables.

Palisades Plant Diagram

 And only god knows where they were collecting the allowable leakage that they didn’t where it was coming from and what it was running down on. Were they measuring all the leakage?  I can imagine this tank failing with the water filling up the control room and suffocating all control room operators. 

 They had a opportunity to drain it and fix it in the safety of a shutdown outage. This was a totally preventable and unnecessary shutdown. A rash of planned and not planned shutdowns and plant trips prematurely wears out a lot of equipment in a nuclear plant. This leads to the risk of more shutdowns  and drives bad accidents. Ask Palisades about this overcome.  This is a indication Entergy doesn’t know how to run a plant and maintain it. I request the NRC characterize this as a unplanned shutdown because of how egregiously not conservative it has been.

So this is the record going into the last outage and the red finding:  

“Palisades had five unplanned shutdowns in 2011. Because of that the power plant now has one of the worst safety ratings in the country.”

NRC concerns:

·         Organizational failures

·         The need for a recovery plan

·         Poor quality work instructions

·         Failure to follow procedures
·         Poor supervision and oversight of work

·         Poor maintenance

·         Failure to respect the role of an operator

·         Multiple events caused by personnel or equipment failures

·         Questionable safety structure

Language As a Technology of Exclusivity and Special Rules

I framed it as the NRC engineer’s language picks and chooses what issues they bring to the public table and it is immoral. They create a architecture of have engineering half truths and misconceptions in the language structure they make to a community. Vermont, Massachusetts and New York don’t think the NRC has the ability to control chaos at a plant...always got some agency rule trap door leading to all bad behavior is acceptable and nothing ever matters at a nuclear power plant. As long as the public can’t see the bad behavior mean nothing is ever wrong. A structure of selective self interested truths and thus the whole building becomes one enormous inscrutable lie. It’s the history of this industry to tell half truths in defense of self interest and their perception of doing good. It is how you think you doing good and end up destroying 100,000s of jobs and damaging a great nation in the ends of altruism. These guys invented the corporate and government crazy talk phraseology of the 1970’s and 1980’s.

I have seen this over and over again where the agency uses a special language, and a assortment of language rules and engineering rules, supposedly engineer’s speak, as a intention tool of understanding disruption and public  knowledge sabotage. These guys are a cohesive mafia honor culture of half truths and it always ends up as the nuclear industry repetitively shooting themselves in the foot. The industry is sabotage their employee’s future for ideology and profit to special people.

This is primarily a crisis of truth telling and the US government doesn’t have a vehicle that demands on severe penalty insufficient truth telling. This is a age old crisis on “what is truth”?

A NRC official recently spoke of a engineer’s language.

Me:  “ As I spoken, it my feeling that the NRC engineer's language...picks and chooses engineering rationales and issues...indeed picks specific terms of a petitioner to meet a NRC agenda. What is going on is not pure science, it's mocking science and the public process. I am not talking about you, you were a nice guy trying to listen to me...but as the agency talks to me. I have no beef with you.

See I think NRC answers me in a benign and selective way...they answer me with a engineered interpretation of my words that favors the industry or NRC, not in the most unfavorable interpretation of what I am saying against the utility and NRC. I think this is on purpose and it may be the way they are trained to make a response. They could always called me to quiz a point I am really making.

So they expect me to challenge them further down the line with a come back. It is playing games hoping I will lack the initiative to answer them back.

It is just not being straight and direct...it is a form of coercion and corruption.

The official: “You expressed that the material facts of the seal (the temperature duration in radiation for example) had not been established through testing. Therefore, the NRC staff could not prove to you that the Buna-N threaded seal material is adequate for accident conditions as well as normal operating conditions. You also expressed that you felt that the NRC staff’s safety determination was merely “throwing engineering language” at you instead of addressing your concerns.”

Gaming Language: when did the SIRW tank begin leaking?

Here is a prime example the engineer’s language . And I will tell you something, there is no engineer’s professional ethical code or legal requirement for these official to tell the full and complete truth in the media. There is no ethical code requiring the nuclear officials to tell the full truth to the public. There is a bogus permissive for “competitive or propriety reasons” nothing ever should be disclosed without a huge fight to the public.

There is no law to hold these official accountable to the truth said in the media. Certainly there is no consequences for lying. These are public news announcements. 

The NRC was made aware of the leak in April when the plant shut down for refueling. Both Entergy and NRC inspectors monitored the leak. The plant set a limit that if more than 31 gallons leaked in a day, the plant would shut down, Mitlyng said. The plant's license specifies that no more than 34.8 gallons leak a day.

According to a news release from an Entergy spokesman, workers had been monitoring leakage from the plant's safety injection/refueling water tank for several days. but by 1:41 p.m. Tuesday, the leakage had surpassed the limits they set so the tank was declared inoperative.

Palisades nuclear power plant shuts down to fix water leak

Mark Savage is a spokesperson for Entergy, the company that owns the Palisades plant. He says this tank has been leaking for several weeks. It’s an old aluminum tank that holds 300,000 gallons of water. He says the tank is the same age as the Palisades plant: 40 years old.

How come Entergy’s Mr. Savage isn’t required to give all the factual information...how come in the shadow of the red finding they didn’t disclose when this leak began and the location of the tank? How come as a matter of community honor Mr. Savage didn’t initially disclose we got a leak in this tanks is and want do you think if ignore it and started up...what do you think if we ran it to the tech spec limit. What do you think if the unknown crack and leak was getting bigger and they said it won’t be until months until we are required to shutdown and find out what is leaking?      

EventNumber: 48018

The licensee believes that the tank is leaking from several locations. However, at this time, they cannot determine exact locations.

The Fallacy of Risk Based (regulation) Plant Operations

The best defense of safety for the plant is to have adequate safety margins, “as the designers intended the plant to be”. And the first nuclear safety culture precept in any deficiency in initial plant safety plant design, is you fully understand what is causing the barrier degradation. You can’t tell how bad the crack is until you eyeball it for yourself. Imagine that, there is no law requiring them know where a leak is. Engineering says for critical safety public interest you fully understand the magnitude of the degradation and what is causing a leak. How can you tell the difference between a insignificant leak and another insignificant leak, but the second insignificant leak is showing the potential for a catastrophic break. A leak of unknown engineering dimensions,  a leaking rate 10, 20 and 30 gals per day....the leak gives an engineer extremely limited information.

Davis Besse once had a safety insignificant safety leak and the information entrained with this increasing insignificant leak brought the nation to within 1/8 of a inch nuclear crisis. There were diligently measuring its increasing leakage rate as a unimaginable hole ate away inches of metal away from a reactor head. They tripped over the leak while shutdown, that is how they caught it.  

Right, it is how men make self interested rules based on personal advantage on how to interpret new information. It is not requiring a human to use his full astonishing mental capacities to interpret new information. You see the how risk related regulation allows the facility to make a safety determination based on very limited information. It gives the operators of a nuclear plant a permissive to act stupid for mere pennies. This 300,000 gal tank has very small 35 gal a day leak and it gives Entergy the permissive to not care why it is broken. You could have a minor earthquake, and their could be a degradation in the tank wall in which the whole tank spills into the bottom of the building. In nuclear power plant, there is many more safety angles other than just having enough water to cool a core. You might plenty of water, but not a way to get it to the care.  You see what I am saying, risk regulations allows them too base safety on just a fragment of information. A 300,000 gal tank:

It would take you 42 days to fill up this tank by a garden hose.

It is 15 average size swimming pools of water in the bottom of the reactor building or within the control room.. 

And then the size of the leak was increasing over months. It means some worsening process was ongoing and nobody thoroughly understood what the process was. Risk regulations is the permissive to make me think stupid and act in my own interest! None of this is nuclear safety! These concepts of blowing by the initial engineered safety tank design margins and not knowing what caused a tank leakage is a threat to the conservative safety assumption and actions country wide. It not what you know that kills you (leakage rate) in Davis Besse, it is the unknowns the leakage is telegraphing you.  This tank feeds all of the emergency make water for this nuclear reactor: high, medium and low pressure feed. It bad enough the utility doesn’t know right from wrong...but this is a grave principle of conservative nuclear safety that the agency doesn’t know right from wrong. As for the acceptance of a assurance on a Safety Injection Refueling tank leak with such a worsening indeterminate leakage and carrying so little factual information by Entergy, are there any real engineer’s with moral conscience voice left in the NRC?  Does the agency know how important missing information and selective data is with knowing and understanding safety? It is not the information and evidence you can see with your eyes...it is the missing information and evidence that is the killer.

Does risk perspectives make curiously, facts and evidence obsolete?

NRC concerns:

·         Organizational failures
·         The need for a recovery plan

·         Poor quality work instructions

·         Failure to follow procedurese

·         Poor supervision and oversight of work

·         Poor maintenance

·         Failure to respect the role of an operator

·         Multiple events caused by personnel or equipment failures

·         Questionable safety structure   

I always thought the ROP punishment for a utility’s bad behavior was to appease the wider public. It is to shallowly make the public feel better about nuclear power instead of making the industry better. It is to create a smoke screen to make the public think grand changes are underway for a bad utility. But it has no or little effect at changing utility bad behavior. Here is the absolute evidence just months away from a rare red finding. The ROP is just for show. Here is what the NRC thought of Entergy this past Feb in their red finding.  

Feb 2012 IR 2012005

For conservative assumptions, the inspectors reviewed the Apparent Cause Evaluation(ACE), corrective action documentation, the recovery plan and NRC inspection findings. The licensee determined that the apparent cause was managers making decisions based on meeting only minimum regulatory requirements. The inspectors concluded that based on the findings reviewed by the licensee, the licensee identified a reasonable apparent cause. However, the inspectors believe that the recovery plan elements related to address leadership engagement, correction of performance gaps and degradation of safety culture principles more accurately characterize the causes of the findings. In addition, the recovery plan includes broader actions that will more likely effect change. The ACE actions included training of supervisors on conservative decision making. While this is a reasonable step in eliminating the cross-cutting theme, management reinforcement of conservative decision making is necessary to achieve sustainable results. While the ACE corrective actions capture this through an observation form, the broader elements of the recovery provide a mechanism more likely to achieve sustainable results.

So here we are in a preventable shutdown. From the beginning before the outage Entergy knew they had a unknown defect in the  Safety Injection Refueling tank with a increasing leakage rate. They had a conservative opportunity to completely understand the nature of the leakage and repair it before the startup. It is right out of the mouths of the Entergy officials before the red finding and all the plant troubles... now with the SIRW tanks accident. Its right out of the mouth of the NRC talking about Entergy’s problems...they continue “only” meeting the minimum regulatory requirements and making poor conservative decision after all this self flogging back whipping and crying crocodile tears. It is as if pretty words in front of community and the promises they made to a nation have no meaning at all. It is all for show! We are all in a reality TV show and nothing has meaning at all except customer ratings. They don’t even care if all they are drawing is the losers in our society.  

Yet, where was the conservative influence of the NRC with making Entergy eat there own words in another component degradation. In their own words, “stop just meeting only the minimum regulatory requirement”? How come NRC behaves like reality tv where words and errant emotions have no meaning...where everything is a insignificant show. How come they don’t act like billions of dollars and our nation’s engineering reputation are at stake? How do you get them out of la la land...what will it take?

Does the agency put in credence in their own NRC inspection report words that condemned Entergy with only meeting minimum regulatory requirement, engagement of performance gaps and degradation of safety principles? Does the agency’s own words have any meaning at all and do they perform any organization force on maintaining safety principles in the whole of the nuclear industry? If congress told the NRC to rob a bank or destroy the nuclear industry through self serving rules...are the plant NRC inspector obliged on pain of the law to rob a bank or destroy their nuclear plants through indifference? Are promises to keep to a community and inspection report words just meaningless noises in the breezy? Is this reality tv disconnected from meaning?

NRC concerns:

·         Organizational failures

·         The need for a recovery plan

·         Poor quality work instructions

·         Failure to follow procedures

·         Poor supervision and oversight of work

·         Poor maintenance

·         Failure to respect the role of an operator

·         Multiple events caused by personnel or equipment failures

·         Questionable safety structure  

All of the nuclear safety principles the NRC has been espousing in the shadow of Palisades bad behavior post red finding should have drove the agency to make Entergy fully engineering wise understand the Safety Injection Refueling tank leak before start-up and bring that tank back to the initial plant safety design at earliest shutdown opportunity. The agency’s correct ‘inspection’ and red findings words to Entergy now condemn the agency itself.  The agency’ s nuclear industry philosophy are a disgrace to the world of nuclear power safety principles itself. The first principle to the community should have been to notify the public that the tank was leaking from a unknown location and the leakage rate was increasing, yet still meeting its tech spec limit from the moment it began leaking. In the shadow of one of the worst plants in the nation and a red finding, why does this information only show up in a emergency shutdown.

A conservative assumption based on the location of the tank, the leak rate is ramping up in a spike for unknown reasons...they should have scrammed the plant. 

They should have admitted the 300,000 leaking tank sat on top of the vital control room.  The agency should have asked the public what they thought about this condition when the leak first showed up. That is public participation. The first principle should have been complete truth and full discloser to the public in the shadow of the 4^th worst operating plant in the nation. I certainly would have requested a immediate shutdown and repair of this tank from the moment the tank began leaking. It is beyond preposterous public credibility-wise in the shadow of Fukushima, that the agency didn’t admit the core cooling and make up tank was leaking and the utility didn’t know where and the extent of the damage till it directly challenge tech specs. Palisades and NRC secrecy facilitated the operation of a not safe nuclear power plant.  

In the shadow of Fukushima and the 4^th most dangerous plant in the USA, should the agency be creating more plant operating super secrecy or more transparency?

Does the agency know right from wrong? Does the agency’s words of criticism to a poorly performing plant have any order creating meaning at all? Or are they just altruistic words broadcasted to the public without any internal backing what so ever.

So here I am giving two week warning on May 30 predicting based on the past behavior of Entergy that a controversial plant trip or a unplanned shutdown (June 12) was right around the corner. Congratulation Entergy that was a pathetic 34 days of continuous plant operation. Doesn’t that question how many shutdowns and plant trips they will have in the next cycle.

Palisades nuclear plant trip?’

“I smell a troublesome plant trip in the air....”

“Come on, admit it?”

Is this the grand NRC “nothing ever matters” philosophy on leaking nuclear reactor safety system water leakage stated by a agency official. Does all that we know about accident warnings and precursors boil down to all nuclear plants are able to operate when some parts that are leaking. Does the NRC just act like reality TV viewer aren’t real...the community out there is fake...the world has no meaning and consequences at all?

And we sit in the shadow of another NRC disgrace in San Onophre. The new steam generators didn’t meet their original design specification. Who cares if nuclear components are always leaking and nobody is required to meet original design specification until a terrible accident shows up costing the ratepayers and our nation billions. Who cares, it acceptable in our rules, our rules are the primacy in our safety philosophy. Our rules are our god and our god is unanswerable to all outsiders.  Right, it all a reality TV show and nothing matters or has consequences. We are all protected because everything is fake. 

Who cares about if all or some reactor safety parts are leaking...who cares if the computer safety engineering codes don’t meet original design specification?   And she misrepresented it cause the leak has been getting bigger and nobody understood why and how it was leaking. There is not a higher safety principle in engineering than in fully understanding what is going on in a nuclear plant. I know what is going on with my indications and I can confidently predict the outcome of all my indications...no guess works and rolling the dice in this industry. Is this really the safety philosophy of the NRC?   

Nuclear plants are able to operate when some parts are leaking. "There is always some kind of leakage going on," Mitlyng said. "As long as it's very small and doesn't get bigger."

Here is an the emergent problem Palisades didn’t handle correctly in the recent past. It lead to a very serious plant accident and out of control plant trip. It set up a pattern of risk taking that lead to risking human life trying to keep the plant operating when maintenance work wasn’t done right and safety equipment wasn’t installed as originally designed. Other serious problems and this led to being one of the worst operating plant in the USA. Basically they had a so called minor indication of a fail equipment warning light  that they put off at fixing when the plant was in safe shutdown condition. Does it sound familiar?  This minor lamp defect led directly to a grossly botched installation of new breakers replacing obsolete breakers to a back up DC emergency electrical system. Honestly, talking about safety budgets and priorities...risk perspective...what proof do you got that insignificant problem won’t lead to a enormously mind boggling problem. There it is that insignificant problems lead directly to a incompetent nuclear operator and big national problems.  Here is the case that a perceive insignificant problem led to a degradation in the life blood of emergency electrical power to many nuclear plant safety devices. And with the Safety Injection Refueling Water tank leak of unknown location and degradation mechanism the chances they take just get bigger and bigger. What is wrong with you, our rules allows this. Our rules are your god!

Buddy, in a nuclear plant all priorities and budgets are immoral. You never know all the risk until you get down to the bottom of the rat hole...a sterile computer model is never as smart as our brains  and computors senses are not hard wired to the real world like ours. They found grave maintenance errors in the installation of this important safety gear while at power and they didn’t have the integrity to immediately shutdown the plant and fix it at a safe shut condition. The DC electricity plant trip and the leaking Safety Injection Refueling Water tank is the exact same issue derived from only meeting the minimum regulatory requirement. Rules carry so little information and our human brains can process so much information...our brains are so smart at discriminating important information from insignificant information. We do it much better than some blind and stupid rule.  But what can you do if a rule gives us all the permissive to act stupid...

 In Palisades words, this was a really insignificant lamp problem with the Fukushima emergency electricity system. I’ll makes the case insignificant lamp problem carried all the information about the up coming DC accident.

 “Prior to the 2010 refueling outage 1R21, routine preventive maintenance performed per work order WO52025543-01 identified that the green status indication lights for the containment escape air lock MZ-50 were not working. Although CR-PLP-2010-3580 and work request WR210717 were issued at the time, this condition was not addressed until the troubleshooting activities scheduled for Thursday 09/22/11 under WO248834-01.

In the NRC’s words, this was all thought of as a insignificant problem until seem from the light of the history made of the DC bus plant trip. Did I once say it, all catastrophes emerge from inaccurately perceived insignificant problems.

During Refueling Outage (RFO) 21 in the fall of 2010, the licensee performed extensive maintenance on Panel D11-2, which included the replacement of 10 breakers inside the panel, as well as other maintenance activities. Any performance deficiencies associated with the maintenance conducted during RFO 21, which led to the instrument air transient that occurred on September 23, 2011, will be addressed in the fourth quarter NRC Integrated Inspection Report (IR) (05000255/2011005).  On Thursday, September 22, 2011, the licensee commenced a WO to troubleshoot the inoperative green indicating lights for Door MZ-50 (Emergency Airlock Lights). Through this investigation, all interlocks, indication lights, and limit switches for this door were found to be satisfactory. Since this door was due for its technical specification (TS) required surveillance test on Monday, September 26, 2011, the decision was made to conduct more troubleshooting activities to identify the cause of the indicating light issue.

The Safety Injection Refueling Water tank leak is much worst then the DC system short. It is the exact same accident with the NRC and Entergy accepting for self interest incomplete information around a safety system defect or degradation. The crack rules allows us the permission to not fully investigation a safety system degradation because risk regulation is designed to make us stupid.

The point I am trying to make is Entergy and the NRC has a habit of getting indications that problems are developing and they define it a minor they hear the zapping of a huge electrical short and this creates a troublesome plant tip with complication. All huge tragic accidents with body parts spued all over the place begin as insignificant problems that were ignore and approved by risk perspectives. They bury it in their bureaucratic maintenance document priority system for months and years. They wait until the last and worst possible moment in their work priority system...that drives the plant and employees into creating a grossly unprofessional plant transient. Of all the public back flagging over Entergy’s shameful red findings and poor behaviors over the last few years, in the last 6 months with both the agency and Palisades and now in shadowed of the SIRW leak,  they act/ acted as if they haven’t learn one lessen.

They keep recklessly repeating the bad behavior over and over again, no matter how much public back flogging they do to each other and the promises they make to the public and the community about changing their bad behaviors. As with a host of terribly poor utility’s behaviors like Entergy, Fort Calhoun, TVA and SCE, it is like the NRC is oblivious to their choices of not demanding a change in behavior from a bad utility. This is truly regulatory and NRC insanity. There are enormously costly consequences to our nation all around us right now. It is like the agency is running around utterly disconnected from the consequences of their choices and the outcomes of not being involved with controlling bad behaviors. The agency doesn’t understand cause and effect....or the agency doesn’t know how to drive effect.

Fed 22, 2011

'It would know the conditions (dysfunction) of the managers and employees, we would know every error of a policy, the absence of a procedure, rule or organization attribute, know perfectly every defect in every component. We would have the perfect gods eve view of the plant and the organization. Push the magic button, do we have a green, yellow or red light at Palisades, the NRC or Entergy?" 

Request Palisades nuclear power plant and all Entergy nuclear power plants be immediately shutdown.

NRC concerns:

·         Organizational failures

·         The need for a recovery plan
·         Poor quality work instructions

·         Failure to follow procedures

·         Poor supervision and oversight of work

·         Poor maintenance

·         Failure to respect the role of an operator

·         Multiple events caused by personnel or equipment failures

·         Questionable safety structure  

1) That the Safety Injection Refueling Water tank shutdown be defined as a unplanned shutdown.

2)  Request the NRC bump up the Palisades performance indication from red to the next level of V:  Unacceptable Performance.

3) Request an outside authority, nobody trust the NRC’s OIG...why didn’t the agency force Palisades Entergy to thoroughly investigate SIRW leak when the leak first appeared. Why didn’t the NRC make them fix it in the last safe shutdown period according to the agency’s own nuclear safety culture philosophy. 

4) Request top Palisades Management staff be fired and replaced before startup.

5) Request Entergy's corporate nuclear senior staff be fired and replaced before the restart of the plants.

6) Immediately request two addition NRC inspectors to be assigned to Palisades plant, and to all the rest of the troubled Entergy nuclear plants. There seems to be a few plants of the bunch that behave themselves.

7) Request the formation of a local public oversight panel around every plant.

8) Request a emergency NRC senior official oversight panel with the aims of reforming the ROP.

 9) Request a national NRC oversight panel of outsiders to oversee and report on the agency's activities. There should be a mixture of professional academic people and capable lay people.

10) There continues to be some heavy duty and exceedingly numerous findings of problems with Entergy plants' this inspection reporting cycle...do an analysis of why this is occurring.

11) Request a evaluation if NRC region III has enough personnel and resources.

12) Stay shutdown or remain shutdown until all procedures are fully updated and corrected, all technical and maintenances backlogs are updated and corrected, all training completed, all reports and safety processes fully completed and implemented.

13) Request a independent outside investigation over the insufficient process outcome of the 2008-2009 Palisades security falsification, investigation, safety survey local and fleet wide training and safety surveys. Based on the DC root cause it appears the safety culture for many years has been grossly defective and ineffective, along with the ROP... with then all these processes failing to discover the true depth of Entergy's safety cultural problems and they lied about these processes fixing Entergy. It sounds like this is a generic problem to me. We are broadly are worried about in 2009 over the Palisades security falsification, in the outcome of the violations, whether all the reports and employee cultural surveys with the assortment of NRC and Entergy processes over these very serious violation ever had any meaning at all. According to the Palisades Fukushima Emergency Power System DC short and plant trip, the most recent root cause Entergy admits there is deep and widespread safety cultural problems at the Palisades plant. I feel Palisades safety culture was in the pits in 2009 and before... and the cultural safety survey was a grand Entergy and NRC falsification. The NRC Alternate Dispute Resolution secession over this, the Confirmatory Order, the Entergyinvestigative reports and safety cultural survey, the willing acceptance of this insanity by the NRC and Entergy created the inaccurate falsified impression to the outsiders that Entergy had discovered all the cultural safety problems and corrected them. Nothing could be farther from the truth, all these corporate and agency processes covered up and deepened, took the public's eyes off fixing Entergy... where Entergy now is in much worst condition than they were then. I request independent outside investigation on this dangerous agency corruption before Palisades start-up.

 ...And all of Entergy’s and the NRC’s promises to the community post red finding and in community meetings has been found to be meaningless promises in the light of the  Safety Injection Refueling Water tank leak. All of the ROP and NRC recent meeting about the troubles with the Palisades plant has been a intentional a scam to deceive the public. The intent of this activity by both the NRC and Entergy has been to weaken the nuclear industry as a national security energy-electricity resource.  

14) I request that President Obama fire Chairman Jazcko and the other Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Commissioners! Oops, this has been completed.

 Sincerely,

The Department of the Navy Response To My NCIS Tip

 

See, a nuclear submarine saboteur is mocking the investigation of the Navy by starting another fire with a delayed ignition source.
Shipyard reports another fire near USS Miami

By Joey Cresta

jcresta@seacoastonline.com

June 18, 2012 12:59 PM

KITTERY, Maine — Another fire broke out in the vicinity of the USS Miami nuclear submarine on Saturday, less than a month after a fire inside the sub caused extensive damage, according to Portsmouth Naval Shipyard public affairs.

According to a statement released by public affairs on Monday, a small fire broke out at around 7:13 p.m. on Saturday in Dry Dock 2 at the shipyard, where the USS Miami is located.

The small fire was outside of the ship and a shipyard employee extinguished the flames with a fire extinguisher by the time the fire department arrived, according to public relations.

The ship’s nuclear reactor was never in danger and no radioactive material was involved, public relations reported.

The cause is under investigation. No one was injured.

...Update: So I got it right before it came out by the Navy, the bomb had to be placed in at a strategic time and space so the fire could pick up speed on its own without detection.

I wonder what the sound silencing new technique was they were going to apply on this boat in this availability...was it a highly flammable sprayed on foam to the inside hull or other areas?

There is just about no doubt this is intention intelligent foreign terrorism.

It is at least sailor or shipyard worker sabotage. Navy Times

"The May 23 fire that gutted the fore end of the attack submarine Miami started in a vacuum cleaner used by drydock workers to clean their worksites and stored in an unoccupied space, the Navy said Wednesday."

 Submitted June 5, 2012

Department of the Navy Core Values Charter

As in our past, we are dedicated to the Core Values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment to build the foundation of trust and leadership upon which our strength is based and victory is achieved. These principles on which the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps were founded continue to guide us today. Every member of the Naval Service – active, reserve, and civilian, must understand and live by our Core Values. For more than two hundred years, members of the Naval Service have stood ready to protect our nation and our freedom. We are ready today to carry out any mission, deter conflict around the globe, and if called upon to fight, be victorious. We will be faithful to our Core Values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment as our abiding duty and privilege.

“HONOR”

I am accountable for my professional and personal behavior. I will be mindful of the privilege I have to serve my fellow Americans. I will:
Abide by an uncompromising code of integrity, taking full responsibility for my actions and keeping my word.

Conduct myself in the highest ethical manner in relationships with seniors, peers and subordinates.

Be honest and truthful in my dealings within and outside the Department of the Navy.
Make honest recommendations to my seniors and peers and seek honest recommendations from junior personnel.

Encourage new ideas and deliver bad news forthrightly.
Fulfill my legal and ethical responsibilities in my public and personal life.

“COURAGE”

Courage is the value that gives me the moral and mental strength to do what is right, with confidence and resolution, even in the face of temptation or adversity. I will:

Have the courage to meet the demands of my profession.

Make decisions and act in the best interest of the Department of the Navy and the nation, without regard to personal consequences.

Overcome all challenges while adhering to the highest standards of personal conduct and decency.

Be loyal to my nation by ensuring the resources entrusted to me are used in an honest, careful and efficient way.

“COMMITMENT”

The day-to-day duty of every man and woman in the Department of the Navy is to join together as a team to improve the quality of our work, our people and ourselves. I will:

Foster respect up and down the chain of command.

Care for the personal and spiritual well-being of my people.

Show respect toward all people without regard to race, religion or gender.
Always strive for positive change and personal improvement.

Exhibit the highest degree of moral character, professional excellence, quality, and competence in all that I do.Pingree tours fire-damaged submarine in Maine
Associated Press
June 04, 2012 6:38 PM
"Workers began an assessment and cleanup last week, and Pingree became the first member of Congress to get a look inside when she toured the sub Monday, observing the fire-damaged control room as well as the nuclear propulsion area in the rear of the sub, which was not affected by the fire."
　
Kittery Rep Chellie Pingree, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, climbed down inside the U.S.S. Miami today, observing the damage caused by last month's fire on the nuclear submarine.
So shoot me, I am trying to influence one of the most consequential Naval investigation in many decades.
Translated below: Maneuvering (where they operate the reactor) was out of communications with the outside for a indeterminate amount of time. The worst, finding every one dead in the nuclear spaces after 10 hours and nobody manning Maneuvering or the naval reactor. You could have had everyone asphyxiated in the nuclear spaces. Like I said, there is only one ventilation system in the sub and it serves both forward and back aft. They were minutes away, and luck, from all of the nuclear operators being dead.
I could make a case the breathing apparatus and the ships ventilation is mostly designed for at sea and underwater operation.

This was submitted last week to the NCIS tip line...

"11) The nuclear reactor might have been in more perilous times than admitted. I can't go into it, even when shutdown...this little reactor throws out a really large amount decade heat. Decay heat is what caused all the troubles in Fukushima. Who really knows how bad it was back there at the reactor controls...it was toxic smoke? There is no separation between forward and aft ventilation. How much smoke was in the reactor control room? Were the reactor operators walking around in breathing masks? We know burning debris from 9/11 is extremely toxic and it's killing people. How are sailors and off site volunteer fire department firefighter going to be medically covered with the toxic conditions of this fire?"
This is the Navy department and the shipyard calling congress women Pingree down to be their prop to send a message to Mike Mulligan and outside. They are demonstrating to the outside the nuclear side of the boat is ok....so called using congressman Pingree as a outside independent credibility prop. She is a navy vehicle to speak to the media and thus no Naval officer could be called for task for lying and being unethical. This is one of the pitfalls of strict ethical rules, everyone figures out how to talk through other's mouths. This could still be a still a huge national security operation. They know the congresswomen will be too dazzled to ask the right questions. I had to have a top secret security clearance to work in a submarine back aft in my days. You didn't need that to be a forward puke (we were all pukes...sea sickness transiting on the surface in rough weather) in the ship. The navy very rarely allows civilians back aft without the proper security classification.
Do you think this is a coincidence coming yesterday and the tip to NCIS...this is simmering on such a huge scandal and there is so much special economic interest involved. Do you rebuild a fatally damaged and obsolete submarine to save a shipyard...accommodate too many national security operations for submarines and not enough subs?

Honestly, this kind of immediate damage control from the Navy Department and the fruits of a NCIS tip indicates there is a huge conscious cover-up on going. Or it could be a terrorism investigation...when is it going to go criminal?  The navy department and the shipyard, with a host of political cronies have been telling half truths and story shaping. I'll bet you they have been telling half truths to the puppet politicians themselves, so the politicians can show their best foot forward.

And how demoralizing is this to the submarine fleet of sailors, the expense of the high turnover of sailors and lack of skills caused by the high turnover? This poor planning and critical shortage of submarines for a far as the eye can see. It is driven by our 10 years of wars and our political dysfunction with defense budgets and our national budget priories. This is going to have huge consequence to the lives and families of these sailors. It is going to terribly hobble and weaken the submarine force for a decade. It highlights how fragile the fleet is.

One thing I learned over the years, a dysfunction in one section of a system indicates a dysfunction in the whole system.

And the most vulnerable and heroic volunteer sailors always pays the terrible price with shadowy self interested big careers driving the show.

The horror of it all, Iran knew how fragile the nuclear fleet of submarines was...how breaking the weak link would damage us for a decade.

June 18, 2012: Request Emergency Palisades shutdown

Emergency Shutdown Of Peach Bottom over SRV Seals

Arrived today...

Mr. Mulligan,

I have attached the transcripts from the teleconferences held with you on February 17, 2012, and April 10, 2012, associated with your petition request dated January 24, 2012, regarding Peach Bottom Atomic Generating Station. Per your request during the April 10, 2012, teleconference, a copy of the transcript of that teleconference has been forwarded to the NRC Office of Inspector General.
I also wanted to inform you that the NRC staff is continuing to consider your petition request and is in the process of completing the review of Licensee Event Report (LER) 3-11-03 (ADAMS Accession No. ML11325A383) associated with the failure of the Unit 3, 71B Automatic Depressurization System Safety Relief Valve on 9/25/2011. The NRC staff anticipates that the review of LER 3-11-03 will be completed and addressed in the Peach Bottom 2nd quarter Inspection Report by September of this year, which will be publicly available in ADAMS. Once this LER evaluation is issued, the NRC staff will be able to make a final determination regarding your petition request.

Thank you,

 

John Hughey, Project Manager

NRR / Division of Operating Reactor Licensing

Phone: 301-415-3204

This was dated 2/1/2012 when I first put this on my site...

I made the NRC think and I am sure Exelon...I appreciate the NRC in this.

............

New Updated NRC Vender Issues


Exelon Fourth-Quarter Profit Misses Estimates on Costs, Weather
Jan 25, 2012 Bloomberg: Exelon is seeing profit margin shrink on electricity generated by its 17 nuclear reactors as contracts it signed when power prices were high begin to expire, said Andrew Levi, a New York-based power analyst with Caris & Co. A glut of U.S. gas supplies has cut prices for the power-plant fuel, in turn causing average electricity prices in PJM to fall 38 percent since 2008.

“Power prices in general have fallen off a cliff,” Levi said in a telephone interview before the earnings were released. “Whether it’s Exelon or some of the integrated names, they definitely have some big headwinds to fight.”

Jan 24, 2012

R. William Borchardt
Executive Director for Operations
US Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington, DC 20555-0001

　

　

Dear Mr. Borchardt,

Request an Emergency Peach Bottom nuclear plants 2 and 3 shutdown to replace all safety relief valves pneumatic actuators buna-n seals with nylon seals…or other high quality and durable materials designed and tested for elevated temperature.

Here are excepts from the License Event Report 05000278 2011-003-00 dated 11/18/2011.
“Based on evaluation of the 9/25/11 surveillance testing performed on Safety Relief Valves (SRVs) during the P3R18 Refueling Outage, site Engineering personnel determined that the 71 B SRV did not meet its allowable leak rate for the pneumatic actuation controls for the Automatic Depressurization System (ADS) feature of the SRV. This resulted in a degradation of the number of times the 71 B SRV could be used during a design basis event. This event was considered as a condition prohibited by Technical Specifications. The cause of the excessive leak rate was due to a failure of the 71B SRV actuator diaphragm thread seal. The thread seal was replaced on 9/26/11. As-left leak testing was performed and the valve was restored to an operable condition to support startup from the P3R1 8 Refueling Outage.” Let me get this straight, this is a important nuclear core cooling safety system. One of the most important. We got terrible issues nationwide with internal nuclear safety engineering quality...also big troubles with communicating to engineering nuclear contracting parts venders and other engineering services. They have big troubles with controlling the quality of repair or replacement safety parts and all realms of engineering services. These safety parts and component venders can make more money not having adequate safety engineering support services for the components they sell on a nationwide basis. You can just make more money trading metal and rubber for profits. That is the short term hyper efficient business model we are using in manufacturing and part supplier than you can selling nuclear safety. You bet, you better be thinking to the new nuclear plants with this one.

This got to be backwards. So you had a contractor tell you in March the seals are substandard and 6 months later your LER states the apparent cause of a buna-n seal failure was thermal degradation of the thread seal material. And you don’t got the capability to immediately update the valve actuators knowing there are safety deficiencies. Is this a nuclear plant and is this the United States of America, the greatest nation on the planet? 

“Based on evaluation of the 9/25/11 surveillance testing performed on Safety Relief Valves (SRVs) during the P3R18 Refueling Outage...”
“Based on March 2011 vendor technical evaluation report, upgrades to the diaphragm thread seal for ADS SRVs on Units 2 and 3 are planned.”
...”There were no actual safety consequences as a result of this event. Lets get the wording right, this is how Peach Bottom nuclear plant words it. “When inspected by maintenance personnel, the thread seal had indications of being dry and brittle.”
“Subsequent review by Engineering personnel determined that the
apparent cause was thermal degradation of the thread seal material. A vendor technical evaluation report was issued in March 2011 and provides recommendations to upgrade the seal with a design that is more resistant to heat related failures.” Can you believe it coming out of a nuclear power plant engineering department they don’t ask themselves is this a expected failure? God help us all how this “dry and brittle” seal will perform in a design accident and being in a high temperature environment of a accident. If this is the way Peach Bottom does safety engineering safety systemically, when the rubber hit the road, you are all screwed. Was there more temperature around this seal than normal? How long was the seal in the actuator? Why did it fail early? Is it the exact same material as they used before with so much success? Why did it fail because of thermal degradation? Did any other plants have issues with SRV Buna-n seal and the parts or vender supplier? Was the vender parts or supplier trying to pull a fast one over Vermont Yankee, I mean Palisades Bottom? Is there anything to learn from the troubles at other plants” ...“There were no actual safety consequences as a result of this event.Do you really trust this kind of vender who is known to be not forthcoming? Think of the self interest in this for both Peach Bottom and the vender. Why isn’t the deficiencies characterized in the LER and announced too all the other nuclear plants like the federal reporting system was initially designed for? Why the secrecy? I got to tell you something, we hammered the NRC over this at VY. We got a lot more information than we normally get. There is a lot of safety information that other plants should know about, and certainly the community should be notified about...that gets buried in a deep dark hole that only special people can see. It is happening every day in nuclear-land all around us. The single most important determinate for nuclear safety is democratic style disclosure and transparency....fundamental honesty.     
“A vendor technical evaluation report was issued in March 2011 and provides recommendations to upgrade the seal with a design that is more resistant to heat related failures.”
Inoperability of Vermont Yankee’s Safety Relief Valves Due to Degraded Seals LER
Here is Entergy-Vermont Yankee’s LER-02-01 dated 10/25/2010 over troubles with their SRV buna-n. I/we have been nipping at Entergy’s heels over Vermont Yankee and Palisades with many 2.206s. I am one of two 2.206’s over this. The NRC blew me off on this as they always do. Least they allow me to get it down on paper.
“During the 2010 refueling outage, the pneumatic actuators for the four main steam safety relief valves (RV), RV- 2-71 -A, B, C & D, were tested and leakage was identified through the shaft to piston thread seal on three of the four RVs. This leakage, when combined with the RV accumulator leakage, caused two of the four RVs to not meet design actuation requirements and therefore be considered inoperable. Technical Specification (TS)3.6.D requires at least three of the four RVs to be operable for overpressure
...Subsequent material testing of a seal from the same batch lot determined that the apparent cause of the thread seal condition was thermal degradation.”
I would like to know what the shelf life and service life is on these rubber nylon seals?
“The thread seals were manufactured in 2002, supplied to Vermont Yankee (VY) in new style actuators in 2008 and were in service for one operating cycle prior to the test. The thread seals in the new style actuators are made of Buna-N material, were manufactured by Parker Hannifin Corporation and dedicated for use in safety class applications by Curtiss-Wright Flow Control Corporation, Target Rock Division.” Where did I hear Curtiss Wright and Target Rock Division before?  “Prior to the upgrade to the new style actuators, the thread seals were made from a silicon material.”
Hmm, thermal degradation and once made with a better nylon material? We will later get into environmental type 1 and 2 actuators and seals. 
“Material testing determined that the apparent cause of the thread seal condition was thermal degradation. The change to use Buna-N material in the new style seal resulted in reduced thermal margin when considering the potential local heat transfer affects on the seal material. The use of silicone material in the original application provided more margin.”
Oops! Vermont Yankee installed the SRV actuators with Buna-n in 2008. Then the next outage they discovered inappropriate material use for the seals...had to wait to another outage to replace them all. Doesn’t that sound familiar? Does Entergy have parts QA and later systemic issues with QA?

The idea in a critical nuclear power plant core cooling safety system the material engineers weren’t absolutely sure of the characteristic of the buna-n and couldn’t perfect predict with certainty the life span in the worst temperatures...we are in the realm of Fukushima Daiichi stupidity. 
VY will replace the Buna-N thread seal material in all four RVs during the 2011 refueling outage with a material that provides more temperature margin.”
It is a total breakdowns in material science and engineering. It is happening all over the place and I don’t understand why it is happening.

NRC VY Problem and Resolution Inspection 2011-008

You wouldn’t believe all the troubles Entergy’s Palisades plant is having with management...following procedures, adequate process system for following maintenance and fixing problems. Most perplexing is, management showing they actually don’t care what was going on in the site, by paying attention and being intrusive. I got a pending 2.206 on that. They are right up there with being in the top five worst plants in the nation. This is another indication how systemic their problems are and the NRC didn’t care. There computer document system is upside down...
“The inspectors determined that the licensee's evaluation “did not specifically identify” two apparent causes or significant contributing causes.”
Is the NRC and the industry still confused when to submit a Part 21? Should a Part 21 with Peach Bottom be submitted? Or is Peach Bottom using materials outside their design parameters? Where is the promised Part 21 from Target Rock with Vermont Yankee? 
“The SRV vendor did not submit a part 21 report for the SRV issue due to the Type 2 actuator being used in an application outside of two design parameters.”
Does Peach Bottom have type 2 or type 1 SRV actuators and seals? ...“Design ambient temperature for the Type 2 actuator is 150 degrees F according to the vendor design documents. The actuators at Entergy are exposed to an ambient temperature environment up to 185-190 degrees F according to the CR. This would result in a 35-40 degree F loss of margin for the BUNA N thread sealant (rated at 210-250 degrees F.)
... “The Type 2 actuator has cooling slots, where as the Type 1 actuator does not. These cooling slots were not accounted for when the Type 1 actuator was replaced with the Type 2 actuator and the cooling slots were covered by insulation.” Peach Bottom questions if the VY insulation story was made up or had nothing to do with the temperature failure. A improper, inaccurate and falsified safety engineering justification. The industry is riddle with these dangling justification and tons of junk science and engineering dressed up in highly educated suits. The dangling science and engineering justifications not a bit connected to any thread of truth, except somebody is making big bucks to get a nuclear plant over to the next outage for a problem that won’t get fixed anyways. It will just get lost in the complexity of the system and people. The nuclear industry is filled with the purveyors of third party service junk science engineering providers. It is easier and cheaper to buy a well suited scientific engineering lie than immediately correct the rubber seal on nuclear core cooling components. Oh, it is a engineer’s standard of ethics and codes issue. Don’t even get me talking about all the vague engineering codes purchased by the nuclear industry.        "This caused the designed convection cooling of the actuator internals to be lost. As a result, the BUNA-N thread seal material was exposed to high temperature for a longer period, which increased the potential for degradation of the BUNA-N thread seals.”
This admits it was a big screw up. But do you get it, VY upgrades in 2008 from nylon to the thermally failed buna-n. I don’t understand why Peach Bottom has buna-n now and their vender is talking upgrading after more failures. Why doesn’t Peach Bottom have nylon seals now... why do they have Buna-n?
“Entergy Engineering staff overly relied upon the vendor's
recommendation did not conduct an appropriate equivalency review on their own. Thus when the Type 2 actuator was used at VY the valve was exposed to higher temperatures which resulted in thermal degradation and air leakage from the actuator.
This is the type of massive communication and confusion crap that has gotten Entergy-Palisades into so much trouble. The VY NRC inspector told me the vender kind of put one over on VY. I think they didn’t have the proper qualified part or components. VY said stick it in there, I don’t care what the temperature qualifications are and told the vender they would pay them extra if you covered our backs. And the NRC just doesn’t care when these boys’ play word games and lie to the agency...more worst, lie to the community. You know, shit in their own nest with lies and run-a-way distortions too numerous to remember to make money.   “During RFO27, Entergy discovered that the SRV Vendor no longer supported the Type-1 SRV actuators which energy had. The vendor recommended replacing the Type 1 actuators with a Type 2 actuator. The Type 1 actuator has silicone thread sealants which are rated up to -390 degrees F while a Type 2 actuator uses BUNA-N polymer which is rated up to 210-250.” Respectfully request
1) Have Peach Bottom do a outside detailed investigation and root cause.
2) The NRC do a special investigation or equivalent...with contrasting and explaining the similarities and differences between Vermont Yankee and Peach Bottom SRV actuators and seal problems.

3) Need a generic notice on this?

4) That Peach Bottom nuclear plant be immediately shutdown.

5) All safety relief valve seals and actuators be replaced with a design with a sufficient margin of safety before start-up.

6) Request the formation of a local public oversight panel around every plant.

7) A emergency NRC senior official oversight panel with the aims of reforming the ROP.

8) A national NRC oversight panel of outsiders to oversee and report on the agency’s activities. There should be a mixture of professional academic people and capable lay people.

9) I request that President Obama fire Chairman Jazcko and the other Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse NRC Commissioners!
　
　
Sincerely,

　

Mike Mulligan
Hinsdale, NH 03451
steamshovel2002@yahoo.com
1-603-336-8320

　

　

The $400 million dollar Submarine

Man, have you ever seen such a thing? The navy is only talking though politician proxies. The competing shipyard proxies of Blumenthal in Conn and a assortment of Maine politicians. The he said, she said...the Navy told me.

General Dynamic's political proxy says the damage is a billion dollars hoping to steal work for Portsmouth, and the Portsmouth's Naval shipyard political proxy says it's $400 Million and we can keep the work here....

Another NCIS tip:  

So why doesn't the navy do a reenactment of the start of the USS Miami fire in identical mockup. Make a mock up of the room and the typical materials in the room that was first set on fire...with a identical vacuum cleaner. 

Do a identical wielding and cutting operation that was going on in the last moments before the fire, then vacuum up the hot slag or particles up as the first one. Stick the vacuum in the mock up room and hopefully watch the fire start and propagate in the appropriate time.

So why isn't anyone outrage that the navy department set this up, where so many Sailor's and firefighters lives were placed at risk. How come no outrage $400 to a $1 billion has been consumed up somebody's nose. I can think of all the many years the sailors lives that is going to be inconvenienced and the national security submarine missions that is going to be made more fragile when there aren't enough submarines in the first place.

Where is the outrage and why aren't heads rolling...

...All the concerns shown to date are over the survival of the Portsmouth shipyard or if another shipyard will get this new work. It is only the economics and politics that matter in the area.

Our political system is in horrible shape...

We got a monster hidden in the closet...how does a democracy and its people maintain control over such a program as nuclear submarines?  How does the people keep control of this program when so much is hidden in military secrets? This is the defense establishment in general. You trust these slimy politicians operating behind closed doors.

The older I get, the ultra highest nation security and national priority has become...is defense jobs, and the profits and power of the defense establishment.

And the media and forth estate is dead to what is in our national interest....the news interest is crippled.

...Honestly, the $400 million dollar repair job is going to be one of the most expensive submarine's ever. How do they value the worth of a submarine, divide the total cost and upkeep by the number of years of operation?  Maybe the total cost per100,000 miles? You are not going to get another decade out of this antique pig. All that new equipment is going to have only half its life before the end of sub life. And then new technology are going to make this half used equipment obsolete,. So you can't put this in a new sub. You can almost count on before this it over with, you know the defense establishment, the total cost to get the sub's screws to ever spin in the ocean again is going to double to $800 million dollar. And you're still going to have a obsolete nuclear power plant and propulsion system obstructing the operation of this ship. This ship is going to be in the sitting at the pier or in the yards more than out to sea after 5 years.

They tell me we are in crisis with not enough subs. They are going to put this thing together with duck tape and bailing wire in order to sate the crises. Can you see them all putting on a rush job at the other shipyards to push out defective new subs? They are going to charge big bucks for the rush jobs. Bottom line for the USS Miami, you are going to get a rush job sub with one eighth the capability of the ship going into this ship yard. The defense capabilities are going to be a shell of what it once was...probable a really expensive stand-off platform that can only throw tomahawks and torpedoes at great distances with the sub. This baby is always going to need to be within a hundred nauts of land because of break downs.

Right, you going to get but a shell of a great submarine out in the fleet. This crippled sub is going to save the asses of the Portsmouth's shipyard and the navy admirals...to save the economic interest of a dying and poor Maine. You see what I am getting at, you are placing out side the military establishment's burdens and saving navy brass's asses burdens on the future USS Miami. It is going to hobbly submarine fleet and fleet wide operations in general. You are hobbling the fleet operations to accommodate outside pressures and burdens, mainly distructive political pressures.

Iran's Response to Israel and the USA

Just for full disclosure...I got buddies in the FBI?
Translation:
 
You two ain't shit. You know I've already taken out a USA nuclear powered sub in Maine and its reactor. Think of what we will do to you if you militarily take our illegal nuclear weapons production sites? We will proportionally decimate Israel and the USA?

Iran vows 'proportionate' response to any strike on nuclear sites

Agence France-Presse Jun 3, 2012
TEHRAN // Iran will respond to any Israeli or US attack against its nuclear sites with a "proportionate" reaction, the military adviser to the country's supreme leader Ali Khamenei said on Saturday.
General Yahya Rahim Safavi, quoted by Fars news agency, said however that such an attack was unlikely.
Despite warnings from Washington and Israel that "all options are on the table" if negotiations between Iran and major powers on Tehran's controversial nuclear programme fail, conditions do not favour an assault, he said.
"They may be able start one but they can not end it and it remains in Iran's hands," the general said.
"The domestic political, economic and social conditions in America and the Zionist regime are not such as to have a new war in the region," he said.
US President Barack "Obama wants to get re-elected (in November) ... the cabinet of Mr (Israeli prime minister Benjamin) Netanyahu is a fragile one," he said.
However, in case of an attack, "we will act against their military operation smartly, proportional to any damage that they inflict on us ... meaning we will hurt them as much as they hurt us."

New: Asymmetric warfare

Scenario: They are politically and war gaming this right now in the pentagon.

Al Qaeda might be grasping to make a last statement. Iran or Syria might be fearing eminent attack by the USA. With our cyber warfare viruses attacking the middle East and Iran, we have admitted we have committed an act of war against Iran. The USA says it's a act of war if somebody does cyber terrorism act against us.

What if Iran preemptive or reactively demonstrates a show of force by secretly hitting a high profile American military target? By its demonstration you will understand our reach if you go to a proportional limited war against us. Do you really want to start a war with us when you are so economically weak and we can hit so many of your high profile targets to the world's media delights?

The evidence points to it and there are some wild rumors out there. Did Iran or Syria, or them both and with unknown parties conspire and commit a direct act of war by sabotaging a high profile United States nuclear attack submarine sitting naked and unprotected in a naval shipyard? Did Iran fire bomb the USS Miami SSN 755? What will the next one look like?

How would we know if this was a United State's false flag operation, to provoke us into attacking Iran and others?

Do you trust the Navy department to investigate this on their own? Remember the battleship the USS Ohio during the Reagan administration? Would they want to hide their own flaws and give us a partial investigation.

What Institution would you trust to tell us the truth and what level of truth and transparency is a necessity for a democracy?

Would the Navy department bury a terrorist attack or a act of war against us in anticipation of a upcoming presidential election? Would the administration provoke an attack to throw an election or take our minds off a upcoming depression? Is the new stimulus to save us from a depression, a war with Iran? Would the Department of the Defense and their related corporate interest start a war in order to mitigate the upcoming massive defense cuts?

I could make a case a new greater middle east is worth a lot of blood and guts. It has been the dream for 50 years of the greater world to modernize them. We are half way there? My philosophy is you don't provoke a wild and wounded rabid dog to attack you, so you can feel good about putting the dog down out of its misery.

What if the conflagration in the sub USS Miami was stupid accident and Iran is using the disaster to stick out its chest to the world and bag to its population how strong they are?

What if you are on the scene and the big story is different than what you know?

Who do you serve? Who do your trust? What do you believe?

Have you ever been so alone!

Al Queda attack on USS Miami submarine notes

Snowe, Collins: Navy will rebuild fire-damaged sub

KITTERY, Maine
(NEWS CENTER) -- The U.S. Navy is determined to rebuild the submarine damaged by fire at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. That word came from both of Maine's U.S. Senators after visiting the shipyard Friday. They also had high praise for all the firefighters and the sub's crew members who battled the fire for more than 12 hours.

The Senators say that shipyard workers are still ventilating the remaining smoke and fumes from inside the submarine and pumping out the three million gallons of water used to fight the fire.

The Navy is starting its investigation to determine how the fire started.

The flames broke out Wednesday night in what's called the forward compartment of the Miami, and officials report significant damage to that part of the sub. Senator Snowe and Collins say the Navy will investigate the cause, the extent of the damage and whether there was any criminal activity involved.

Sen. Snowe says there is no reason to suspect any wrongdoing, but regulations require that to be included in the investigation.

The Senators the submarine will be repaired and sent back to sea, and that the work will be done at the Kittery yard. They say Congress will have to find the money to make the repairs.

Snowe says it is believed to be the most serious fire ever at the shipyard, and possibly the worst on a Navy nuclear sub.

...Is she sick or what? If the fire was the shipyard fault, they get double bonus,  and get to benefit for their negligence.

Maine Congresswoman Chellie Pingree:

Pingree said Capt. Bryant Fuller told her the fire came at a good time because the USS Miami had been at the yard for three months, and so workers had already removed a lot of equipment from the damaged area. "It's in their favor that it had been emptied out."

...Ultimately, he is accountable for this fire, he is defending his bad behavior. The fire was good for us because we get a double bonus.

Capt. Bryant Fuller

The USS Miami's reactor was not operating at any time the fire broke out and remained unaffected and stable throughout, said Capt. Bryant Fuller, commander for the shipyard, which is in Kittery, Maine.

...pumped a million gallons out of the submarine, that is about 8 million pounds inside the hull. They are dam lucky the sub never collapsed into the dry dock. And the sub was up on blocks. Certainly the sub was never designed for that weight and that is probably the reason why the sub will never see the sea again.

..."Oops"

"All told, the firefighters rotated 75 times to battle the fire, using 3 million gallons of water, nearly filling some compartments, Snowe said."

Aluminum, cabling and insulation caught on fire?
24 million pounds
1200 tons
300 semis...

...where do they keep the diesel generator fuel oil in a sub for the diesel generator...did that contribute to the fire?

...Ultimately it questions if the fleet of nuclear submarines are fit for combat and fire casualties...unfit for human habitation out to sea.


Miami fire probe will take at least 3 weeks
By
Christopher P. Cavas - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Jun 1, 2012 11:40:24 EDT

Investigators are continuing their work to determine the cause of the fire that burned through the fore end of the nuclear submarine Miami over the night of May 23-24.

The conflagration, which struck while the sub was in drydock at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, burned for nearly 10 hours but, according to the Navy, did not endanger the vessel’s nuclear reactor.

Shipyard workers returned to work on the ship Tuesday, shipyard spokesperson Deb White said.

The effort to fix the cause and assess the damage to Miami is expected to take about three weeks, White said in a news release issued Wednesday.

Several Navy investigations already are underway, said Naval Sea Systems Command spokesman Chris Johnson, including a safety review, a Judge Advocate General investigation and a NAVSEA technical review of the submarine’s condition — standard probes for this kind of incident.

The 22-year-old Miami was about two months into a scheduled 18-month engineering overhaul at the shipyard. The ship, planned for a service life of about 30 years, is scheduled to be decommissioned in fiscal 2020.

Navy authorities so far are declining to speculate about possible causes of the fire or whether the submarine can be repaired.

“Once all the inspections and reviews are complete, the Navy will take the time to look at every possible scenario in regards to the ship’s future,” Johnson said Thursday.

Unofficial reports indicate the fire burned at very high temperatures inside the ship.

Temperature “readings on the hull during the fire were very high,” said one source with knowledge of the incident. “It was indicative of an incredible fire on the inside.”

Although NAVSEA chief Vice Adm. Kevin McCoy proclaimed shortly after the fire that the submarine would be repaired, speculation has been widespread that Miami’s service life is over. The intense fire could have buckled hull frames or weakened the pressure hull, and the cost of repairs could be prohibitive.

If the ship can’t be returned to service, she might be useful as a moored training ship for the Navy’s nuclear power school at Charleston, S.C., where the former ballistic missile submarines Daniel Webster and Sam Rayburn are slated for replacement. Two Los Angeles-class submarines, La Jolla and San Francisco, are scheduled to be converted to the MTS role when they’re decommissioned in 2015. Miami, with her reactor and machinery sections intact, might be swapped for one of those.

If the submarine cannot be returned to active service, it would become the first submarine and the first nuclear ship lost through a U.S. shipyard accident. And while two ships — the transport Lafayette (the former French liner Normandie) in 1942, and the minesweeper Avenge in 1970 — have been lost in commercial shipyard fires, Miami could become the first ship lost in a U.S. naval shipyard since the 19th century.

A Failure Of Imagination, again?

This isn't a failure of a technology, maybe a failure to keep modern a technology. I think the Japanese nuclear disaster for us in groups, organization and as a culture, as individuals and collectively, it is a failure of us to manage our brains, thinking and our hearts. Oh, the sorrows over all our failures to manage our hearts...

A failure of imagination?

Is there a exercise plan in which you can make your imagination muscle stronger? Can you productively strengthen the individual and group imagination muscle. I believe there is such a muscle in out heads.

How many times we going to hear heart sick people, who were involved in trillions of dollars and damaging thousands of people lives, lamenting it was a failure of my imagination after the tragedy. Why does organization culture kill imagination? And I will tell you a fact, imagination ain't shit unless you get it recorded on the organization's paperwork. The ability to create a organization wider discussion on it.

Do we get the choice, in order to fit into the group I am required to cripple my imagination. Or I can have infinite conscience imagination if I leave the group. Is it choice of starving or not?

And we know we are forced to be in groups where our thinking is forced to be stove piped into artificial ideological, culture or organizational bins. This is what we tell everyone what we know and this is what we say we don't know, when we do?

You know, like, who and what do you serve?

And a little altruism can overshadow a much larger altruism...altruisms abuse or altruism blindness. To what ends do to we use altruism for, to open up our eyes to the spectacularly beautiful wider world or to limit ours or our organizational field of view for selfish purpose?

Our greatest failures and sins occur over altruism blindness...our inability to discriminate altruism for self interest over altruism for our common good. Does doing good for another make me feel good or does it set another free? Does it make me feel good, when i should feel very troubled and compelled to act.

Isn't that at that at the bottom of the failures of the philosophy of our free and completive economic markets...?

METI boss fired for nuclear crisis regrets underestimating tsunami threat

Kyodo

The man who was the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's top official when the Fukushima disaster unfolded said he regretted underestimating the tsunami danger when METI was reviewing earthquake-resistance guidelines for nuclear plants before the crisis.

"We should have used our imagination," said Kazuo Matsunaga, who was vice minister of economy, trade and industry when the meltdowns began in March last year, told a Diet-appointed panel probing the disaster Wednesday.

I consider this an intentional distraction that allowed him to drive intoxicated?

..."My mind was occupied with handling the accident at Kansai Electric Power Co.'s Mihama plant," Matsunaga said, referring to a pipe rupture in August 2004 that killed five workers and injured six.

Does NRC's Director Troy Pruett Work in Region II?

Is the NRC's III Division Director Troy Pruett political disease in Region II?

I bet you if they had shut down Browns Ferry their could have concentrated their resources a lot more effectively. It would have made their job as a regulator a lot more easy?

Sounds like Swafford is saying, bug off NRC or I will sic my mad dog southern Republicans and the gang of four pro industry commissioners at you.

Browns Ferry isn't ready to inspect

excerpts:

TVA's nuclear operations chief told officials with the Nuclear Regulatory Agency on Tuesday that Browns Ferry is not ready yet for a third and final special NRC inspection to clear its "red" safety rating.

"We will not invite an inspection team in until have confidence we are ready. ... I can't even give you a ballpark estimate now when that will be."

NRC's regional administrator, Victor McCree, said after the meeting that the federal regulatory agency will take that answer in stride.

"I've been at the mindset that there's no point stressing accountability for procedures we know will change. Holding people accountable to inferior products isn't fair to the employees," Swafford said.