Hurricane Florence's NRC Current Event Notification Document Dump Tomorrrow

This is the only event report on Hurricane Florence. 

Power Reactor	Event Number: 53609
Facility: BRUNSWICK Region: 2     State: NC Unit: [1] [2] [] RX Type: [1] GE-4,[2] GE-4 NRC Notified By: THOMAS SHERRILL HQ OPS Officer: VINCE KLCO	Notification Date: 09/15/2018 Notification Time: 15:45 [ET] Event Date: 09/15/2018 Event Time: 00:00 [EDT] Last Update Date: 09/15/2018
Emergency Class: UNUSUAL EVENT 10 CFR Section: 50.72(a) (1) (i) - EMERGENCY DECLARED	Person (Organization): MIKE ERNSTES (R2DO) CATHERINE HANEY (R2) HO NIEH (NRR) WILLIAM GOTT (IRD)

Unit

SCRAM Code

RX Crit

Initial PWR

Initial RX Mode

Current PWR

Current RX Mode

1

N

N

0

Hot Shutdown

0

Hot Shutdown

2

N

N

0

Hot Shutdown

0

Hot Shutdown

Event Text

UNUSUAL EVENT DUE TO SITE CONDITIONS PREVENTING PLANT ACCESS "A hazardous event has resulted in on site conditions sufficient to prohibit the plant staff from accessing the site via personal vehicles due to flooding of local roads by Tropical Storm Florence." Notified DHS SWO, FEMA OPS, and DHS NICC. Notified FEMA NWC, Nuclear SSA, and FEMA NRCC via email

***These guys are experts with playing the media with happy land nuclear stories (knowingly falsification) and gaming the rules. I just don't know why the media plays along. East to get and free stories. Maybe just no nuclear plant competence in the newsroom. 

So this is the first event notification on this the NRC's page. There no is reason for Indian Point's event report regulation wise to get on the site. This is the only on the site. Where is Brunswick's notification of Friday? They should have released theirs Friday.  

I generally believe the NRC has a information blackout  sounding Brunswick and the other southern nuclear plants. 

They will probably release a dump of nuclear plant event notification on Monday. Unless a plant is still in big trouble.     

Power Reactor	Event Number: 53601
Facility: INDIAN POINT Region: 1     State: NY Unit: [2] [3] [] RX Type: [2] W-4-LP,[3] W-4-LP NRC Notified By: ERIK SILKO HQ OPS Officer: OSSY FONT	Notification Date: 09/13/2018 Notification Time: 08:24 [ET] Event Date: 09/13/2018 Event Time: 00:00 [EDT] Last Update Date: 09/13/2018
Emergency Class: NON EMERGENCY 10 CFR Section: OTHER UNSPEC REQMNT	Person (Organization): RAY MCKINLEY (R1DO) WILLIAM GOTT (IRD)

Unit

SCRAM Code

RX Crit

Initial PWR

Initial RX Mode

Current PWR

Current RX Mode

2

N

Y

100

Power Operation

100

Power Operation

3

N

N

0

Hot Shutdown

0

Hot Shutdown

Event Text

HURRICANE NOTIFICATION PER TECHNICAL REQUIREMENT FOR HURRICANE FLORENCE "A hurricane is within 500 nautical miles from Indian Point Energy Center with wind speed in excess of 87 knots. The National Weather Service has issued a hurricane warning for a hurricane with wind in excess of 87 knots (approximately 100 mph) within 500 nautical miles of the facility. Per the Technical Requirement Manual a prompt report shall be made to the NRC Incident Response Center within 1 hour of receipt of that hurricane warning. "The licensee has notified the NRC Resident Inspector."

Emergency: I Need Somebody To Fly Over Brunswick with an Drone/Plane To Take Pictures

I'll post them on my blog.

Well, after this blog post, I here there was a P-3 airplane flying  and taking photography over the site. Somebody should ask for pictures.

http://www.starnewsonline.com/news/20180917/brunswick-county-duke-energy-nuclear-plant-mostly-inaccessible

Flooding to roads leading to facility have stranded workers, however, plant remains safe

Duke Energy’s nuclear plant in Brunswick County is now inaccessible due to flooding, which has left workers stranded.

Highways 87, 133 and 211 to get to the Southport facility are all mostly impassable, although a few have braved the elements and made it in and out. One worker, who wish to not be identified, said they are fine despite the circumstances and got food delivered via helicopter.

The worker estimates about 250 people are at the plant between maintenance, security and operations

Sept 16, 2018. [KEN BLEVINS/STARNEWS] 

“We are all dirty and tired,” the worker said. “We lost county water to the site yesterday, but we just got it back.”

The worker made it clear the plant is safe despite the effects from Hurricane Florence. Reactors were shut down hours before hurricane-force winds hit the region.

A P-3 Orion aircraft flew over the plant Monday to check on any damage from overhead.

Hobson's Choice: Meltdown Two Cores At Brunswick or Flood Tens of Thousands of Upsteam Homes And Businesses.

This is the Hurricane Harvey's Houston flooding paradox...

The setup

These upstream reservoirs and lakes have expensive vacation and secondary homes on their banks. The strategy of maintaining lake levels for the rich is to maintain the levels right up cozy near the mcmanions. The lakes are maintained high in the summer. The lakes for flood control, are set low for the winter and spring flooding control. They are still set at the high level now especially for the widespread wet summer runoff. The NC hydrology is still draining from the really wet summer. There was a high flow before hurricane Florence. Now biblical precipitation is occurring all though the state and especially for the lakes and reservoir. They are going to have to lower the flood gates...emergency reservoir control...in order not flood the lake expensive homes and the upstream town and communities. A tremendous wall of water then is going to flow down stream in the Cape Fear River to Brunswick. It is a meltdown in it own right. This drastically raises the Cape Fear River downstream up to a flooding level These lakes and reservoirs also have gigantic emergency spillways. You never want to use the spillway...it really is a dam safety device. Once the dams' level exceeds its design lake high level and water goes down the spillway, then you loose the flood control for the down steam communities. All the reservoir water flows out the spillway. In biblical flooding, there is no lake control. Sometimes the emergency spillway is overtopped by lake water flooding and nobody has any flood control for downstream communities. This begins damaging the dam by water erosion. This is called a dam failure and it increases the likely of a cascading dam failure.

So it is your choice: meltdown two nuclear cores or destroy all the  down stream properties and kill all those poor souls by flooding. That is what you are facing. This usually is a corrupt secret back room political deal what to protect.

Ok, why can't the reservoir authorities use their dam(s)flow control gates...throttle them... to control the river level around the Cape Fear River Brunswick area? They are suppose to have the collective reserve capacity to do this. I am confident they are highly sensitive to the nuclear plants in the area???                

The flooding comes within hours of the hurricane hitting the plant. Hurricane flooding is a highly dynamic and unpredictable situation. With up to 40" of rain hitting the North Carolina, we have no indication with how the "Ca pe Fear River" freshwater flooding will interact with the Hurricane surge. All the weathers authorities are saying this Hurricane Florence still has a Cat 4 hurricane surge. This is a facilitative assumption flood barrier. This is the best our monied political system can come up with. It is a Obama Walmart flood barrier.

This problem with engineers is they are trained to look at things in isolation. The NRC has unclear regulations with the licensees and NRC has to look at hurricane flooding holistically with fresh water flooding. So how about a cascading dam failure on the Cape Fear River? You want a name to remember, the Jordan Lake and the 1945 New Hope dam. They talk about a horrendous 1945 flooding event on the Haw River. It directly connects into the Cape Fear River. The got numerous locks on the Cape Fear River. They say most of NC is drained though the Cape Fear River. I mean, all the rivers and their dams that connect into the Cape Fear River. The Harris Lake and their Nuclear plant drains into the Cape Fear River. A cascading set of nuclear plants in a dire emergency?

NOAA says you can expect with a cat 4 hurricane three to greater six inches feet ocean surge over-topping the facility. Honestly, I don't trust NOAA with their computer modeling of hurricane surge levels...I don't trust the NRC's and the licensee modeling of the storm surge and anything associated with the licensee analysis of the storm surge. There is too much self interest involved with in all of this.

Holy Shit: Chaos In the Brunswick Control Room Now and No Required Hurricane Notification To NRC

Update

Really bad news: The Cape Fear River at Wilmington reaches its all-time high just before 4 p.m. Friday. At 8.27 feet, the river topped its previous high of 8.17 feet set during Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

High tide at 2 am. 

Update

The political ramifications... 

What if Brunswick and other southern plants pops tonight or in the next week or so? The state and federal political ramification. At the least, all nuclear plants in North Carolina will permanently shut down. Vogtle is a goner. There will be a long awaited political revolution in the state. 

Don't we all live in interesting times? It is the greatest awaking ever.

If Duke made a public notification early in this, how stuff and big helicopters could our military stage outside the hurricane zone. This will be in the congressional blue ribbon commission...    


You completely disserve it!!! You all know it, we all exactly disserve what we get for out apathy 

  
***OK, I am having a reevaluation on Indian Point's false event reporting of a hurricane in the vicinity of their plant today. IP employees are highly trained on emergency event reporting for normal and emergency event reporting to the NRC. Even in the lowest emergency classification, it is critical they make timely emergency condition to the NRC. This begins spinning up the NRC organization at the earliest moment according to the classification level. They are trained over and over and over on this. There are experts onsite to detect crew incoherence and poor communications. They are highly sensitive with missing a expected and required emergency notification. It means the crew in the control room are poorly trained...it is a direct indication of chaos in the control room and a out of control crew. I think they analyzed what a missing emergency notification means, decided they got to do something about it. They were trying to signal Brunswick is in serous trouble based on their expert experience by sending a false Hurricane notification to the NRC. It was truly a cry for help about Brunswick. It was truly a insider smoke signal to bypass a set of organizations            

***Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock: Waiting for a NRC public response!!! 

Brunswick: "Holy Shit Moment"




Mike Mulligan <steamshovel2002@gmail.com>

10:11 AM (17 minutes ago)



to allegation


"Holy Shit: Chaos In the Brunswick Control Room Now and No Required Hurricane Notification To NRC"

https://steamshovel2002.blogspot.com/2018/09/holy-shit-chaos-in-brunswick-control.html

NRC Allegation

10:11 AM (14 minutes ago)



to me


Thank you for contacting us. Allegations are an important source of information in support of the NRC’s safety mission. One of our team members will respond to you as soon as possible.

The NRC brochure “Reporting Safety Concerns to the NRC” contains information that you may find helpful in understanding our process for review of safety concerns. It includes an important discussion of our identity protection procedures and limitations. The brochure can be found on the NRC public web site at the following link: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/brochures/br0240/.

Please be advised that we cannot protect information during transmission on the Internet and there is a possibility that someone else could read our response while it is in transmission to you. If you are concerned that e-mail transmission may not be completely secure you can contact us by phone or in person. You may contact any NRC employee (including a resident inspector) or call the NRC's Toll-Free Safety Hotline, (800) 695-7403.

-NRC Allegation Team

Right, Indian Point nuclear plant made a false "hurricane in the vicinity" of their plant NRC notification last night, where is Brunswick's???
Current Event Notification Report for September 14, 2018

Brunswick is supposed to make a "set" of hurricane emergency notifications to the NRC. Like a hurricane is in the vicinity of a plant or feeling hurricanes winds. They shutdown both of the plants yesterday. But they are not there. 

Why not speculate? These guys are in the eye of the hurricane right now!!! 

1) They could have had issues with preparing for the hurricane, troubles with the shutdown and issues with the hurricane hitting the plant last night. The control room does notification this though senior leadership. Hmm, two inspectors of the site? Why didn't they prod them? The "control room" began going out of control last night in the chaos and complexity.  

2) Our politicians and the senior NRC leadership decided it would be too disruptive with Hurricane Florence's recue and recovery efforts...they decided to blackout all of Brunswick public required normal and emergency notifications for the greater good. Troubles at the nuclear plant would be too disruptive to the hurricane recue and recovery effort at the news media reporting, local, state and federal levels. Are they doing this at all the southern plants?      

Entergy Declares A Hurricane Notification On Indian Point Nuclear Plant In New York

This sounds like its coming from disgruntled and malicious employees. Pretty high up too. Isn't Indian Point on the way too permanent shutdown. I hope these employees won't harm the harm the plant? 

This also shows the NRC employees aren't paying attention to their work?

One can't imagine the magnitude of the NRC resources that are tending the hurricane crisis at Brunswick and nuclear plants in the south. All nrc eyes are on hurricane Florence. This is a particularly mean time for Indian Point employees to be playing nuclear plant emergency notification games with the NRC?

Or is it a cry for help?         

Power Reactor	Event Number: 53601
Facility: INDIAN POINT Region: 1     State: NY Unit: [2] [3] [] RX Type: [2] W-4-LP,[3] W-4-LP NRC Notified By: ERIK SILKO HQ OPS Officer: OSSY FONT	Notification Date: 09/13/2018 Notification Time: 08:24 [ET] Event Date: 09/13/2018 Event Time: 00:00 [EDT] Last Update Date: 09/13/2018
Emergency Class: NON EMERGENCY 10 CFR Section: OTHER UNSPEC REQMNT	Person (Organization): RAY MCKINLEY (R1DO) WILLIAM GOTT (IRD)

Unit

SCRAM Code

RX Crit

Initial PWR

Initial RX Mode

Current PWR

Current RX Mode

2

N

Y

100

Power Operation

100

Power Operation

3

N

N

0

Hot Shutdown

0

Hot Shutdown

Event Text

HURRICANE NOTIFICATION PER TECHNICAL REQUIREMENT FOR HURRICANE FLORENCE "A hurricane is within 500 nautical miles from Indian Point Energy Center with wind speed in excess of 87 knots. The National Weather Service has issued a hurricane warning for a hurricane with wind in excess of 87 knots (approximately 100 mph) within 500 nautical miles of the facility. Per the Technical Requirement Manual a prompt report shall be made to the NRC Incident Response Center within 1 hour of receipt of that hurricane warning. "The licensee has notified the NRC Resident Inspector."

Are the McGuire and Brunswick Nuclear Plants' Emergency Diesel Generators Safe (4 plants)?

Update Sept 14, 2018

The problem with Brunswick nuclear plant is they are not self governed. The don't find things on their own or fix things before they break. The post Fukushima NRC inspection are an example of this.

Originally posted on Jan 1 2015...reposted from Apr 23, 2015  

05000369,05000324

The problem is:

You are always dependent on small potatoes third party vendors because the original Nordberg DG manufacturer is bankrupt.

It is repetitive with these kinds of failures such with Brunswick +

(Closed) LERs 05000369/2014-001-00 and 05000369/2014-001-01, Condition Prohibited by Technical Specifications (TS) due to Emergency Diesel Generator 1B

Failure

a. Inspection Scope 

This URI was initiated for the NRC issuance of Notice of Enforcement Discretion (NOED) 14-2-002, dated August 27, 2014, in order to review the circumstances that led to the NOED request to determine if any performance deficiencies or violations contributed to the need for the NOED. The inspectors reviewed the licensee’s LERs associated with the failure of the cylinder 5L intake valve stem on the 1B EDG, the licensee’s root cause investigation, and their corrective actions to address the failure. Previous evaluation of the accuracy and details of the licensee’s request for the NRC to exercise discretion not to enforce compliance with the required action completion time for TS Limiting Condition for Operability (LCO) 3.8.1 to allow extra time for the engine to be repaired was documented in NRC Integrated Inspection Report 05000369, 370/2014005.

The licensee established a formal root cause team consisting of six team members, including an outside industry diesel expert, to evaluate the failure and to determine applicable corrective actions. An extensive metallurgical laboratory analysis was conducted on the failed parts and further analysis was conducted by the disassembly of other cylinder heads on the 1B EDG during the subsequent fall 2014 refueling outage when the engine was removed from service. The inspectors found the licensee’s root cause evaluation to be detailed and exhaustive. The licensee determined the cause of the 1B

Basically crap parts... 

EDG cylinder 5L intake valve failure was due to the combined effects of three inlet valve sub-parts which were manufactured by a third party supplier outside of the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) (i.e., Norberg) specified tolerances. These manufacturing discrepancies included: 1) the inlet valve stem hardness/tensile strength was below specifications, 2) the hydraulic valve lash adjuster, which dampens the force between the intake valve and its seat, did not function properly due internal clearances being out-of-specification, and 3) the inlet valve spit rings, connecting the valve stem upper end to its rocker arm, was found with a larger radius. The combined effects of these out of tolerances resulted in inlet valve stem stresses beyond the endurance limit and subsequent valve failure due to high cycle fatigue.

The licensee implemented a number of corrective actions to address the causal factors identified. Actions were taken to place a hold on the procurement of the three out of tolerance components until the EDG parts procurement specifications were revised. The revision would add additional vendor verifications that the components meet the original Nordberg specifications. To address the immediate extent of condition to limit the vulnerability of similar cylinder components being out of tolerance, the licensee reviewed cylinder vibration and ultrasonic signature testing of each of the cylinders of all four EDGs to detect any inlet valve closure anomalies. In addition, during the Fall 2014 refueling outage, both the 1B and 1A EDGs were inspected to ensure no similar out of tolerance components were installed. Similar inspections are planned for the remaining 2A and 2B EDGs. In the interim, the licensee plans to continue conducting periodic cylinder performance signature testing to detect any abnormal change in cylinder performance. The inspectors verified that an adequate extent of condition review was performed for all EDGs, and concluded that there were no licensee performance deficiencies associated with the August 18, 2014, 1B EDG failure. This URI and associated LERs are closed.

b. Findings

No findings were identified.

Originally posted on 1/13/2015

Can you imagine having no manufacturer support, replacement parts stream or large DG engineering or maintenance service.

It is like owning a car and you have to contract through a private vendor service to get them to manufacture spark plugs according to your special specification. You just can't call the manufacturer with a parts number and get the item by FedEx delivery.  

Tim

Talked to the McGuire senior resident for about an hour today over this LER. He was a inspector for twenty five years. Couldn't get him to end the conversation. This is the LER:

LER 2014-01

Components inside the DG failed leading to a shutdown (Aug 2014). McGuire and Brunswick are the only plants in the USA who sports Nordberg DGs. Nordberg went out of business. Basically Duke bought the remaining shell of a company, mostly for the paperwork to support their DGs. They don’t have a typical repair parts stream…they contract to get replacement parts on their own. 

• Counterfeit, Suspect, Fraudulent Items

I believe these replacement parts came from an ocean transportation company who owns big ships according to the resident. Seems old and obsolete Nordberg DG engines are popular in ocean shipping. The NRC is going to violate them in the future. The machine failed in Aug 2014 and the NRC still can't make their mind up to charge them or not.

"The cause of the EDG 1 B cylinder 5L failure is high cycle fatigue of the inlet valve due to the combined effects of three inlet valve train parts which were manufactured outside of original equipment manufacturer (OEM) specified tolerances.

The following factors caused the 5L inlet valve failure:
* Inlet valve stem hardness/strength below specification
* Hydraulic lash adjuster internal inadequate clearance
- Inlet valve keeper inadequate upper ID radius and thickness

You can imagine Duke going to the large DG manufacture for independent advice...do you think these out of tolerance parts will be safe and not cause us problem? If they were a valid manufacturer, you know they would say replace it.  

Interaction of the above factors subjected the cylinder 5L inlet valve to forces beyond the design and endurance limit. Evidence of inadequate manufacturing was confirmed by inspection, measurement, and testing of the EDG 1 B cylinder 5L inlet valve train components. No single factor on its own can cause an inlet valve failure. A combination of the above factors created the conditions necessary for a failure of the inlet valve from high cycle fatigue over a relatively long time period. EDG 1 B operated for approximately 13 years with the out of tolerance parts. All of the above parts issues were created during manufacturing by inadequate adherence to original Nordberg specifications for materials and tolerances by a third party supplier that is no longer in operation."

You get it with the above, how far down the pike you willing to go with a no longer in operation machine manufacturer ( Nordberg) and then the third party parts supplier who no longer is in operation also. Now the parts are made fraudulently in China. What are we going to think if these parts came from a chain of 5 or 6 no longer operating third party suppliers. That is two corporations. You notice the NRC doesn't specify the third party. This should go to the justice department.   

I consider not having a traditional manufacturing company backing up these machines as an un-reviewed safety issue. I told the inspector you got two separate parts found to not meet manufacture specs…how can you trust all the other parts. It got by Duke's QA and their black market parts company is supposed to have nuclear grade QA. Duke has proven themselves as not being a good owner of a DG manufacturing company. You got to test a representative sample of replacement parts to see it them meet specs( they are). I told the inspector making a plant engineer basically playing manufacturer and ordering the manufacturing of parts, plant or corporate engineering isn’t designed for that. It eats up engineering resources and it might cause them not to watch other problems.

I posed the question, well, why can’t you order them to replace all the dgs with new machines. Get a giant manufacture with large engineering services on their machines and the replacement parts traditional stream. He says it is impossible, the specific DGs are integral to the licensing of the plant. Even putting in new machines, it wouldn’t be the original quality. What bs! He said it would be cheaper building a new plant than ripping out an obsolete dg and installing an identical or better dg. If a dg fails in a way it can't be used again...it means the plant would have to permanently shutdown.

He says that is why the industry has never changed out not even one dg in all of the history. 

They could do as a LAR…it certainly is a lot smaller job that replacing SGs. 

The resident brought in NRR and other staff…because the parts had an inadequate pedigree.They really have no idea where the parts came from and they are worried they come from a Chinese fraudulent parts sweat shop?

He was vaguely talking about Duke installing non-nuclear grade DGs outside the building to compensate for the reduced quality with their Nordberg DGs. The Nordbergs would still be used and operational…but some amount of outside non nuclear grade capacity would be in standby in case of failure. I told him don’t worry about in the end, risk perspectives will say it is risk insignificant. He doesn't get my humor.

I found it suspicious as hell I couldn't get him to hang up? 

Mike

 Duke owns Brunswick today. 

November 24, 2009:NRC SPECIAL INSPECTION 05000325/2009011 AND 05000324/2009011

"Brunswick and McGuire are the only two operators in the United States that utilize Nordberg EDGs in nuclear safety-related applications. Progress Energy and Duke Power Corporation are partnered with ESI as owners of the Nordberg nuclear EDG design and share information regarding the Nordberg EDGs. This provides Progress Energy with the availability of shared resources and access to a spare Nordberg diesel at the McGuire nuclear plant for training and troubleshooting. Also, operating experience gained from McGuire provides immediate feedback on key diesel issues or previous maintenance activities."

https://adamswebsearch2.nrc.gov/webSearch2/view?AccessionNumber=ML15005A044

LER 2014-01-01: Condition Prohibited by Technical Specifications (TS) due to Emer ency Diesel Generator 1 B Failure.

Excepts from the LER: