Sending a Messages to Entergy's Corporate Headquarter ?

Basically this is Entergy territory.  New Orleans is the corporate home of Entergy and I imagine they have total control of Louisiana. We are in the heart of the wacko religious right wing Gov Jendal territory. Not doubt the petroleum industry and Entergy controls all the news outlets. What the hell, I was talking a shot at it. I bet you the newspapers notified them of the River Bend and Mike Mulligan issue. 

I was trying to remind Entergy they got more than Pilgrim problems. Playing River Bend against Pilgrim...the New England nukes off the Louisianan fleet? 

Check out the dates? I never got a response from either of these guys.

Did this play any role with Entergy announcing the possible shutdown of Pilgrim?       

New Orleans: "The Times-Picayune"

***From Mike Mulligan

To: mschleifstein@nola.com mschleifstein@nola.com 

Sep 11 at 8:41 PM 

Mark,

Here is a greater truth than the NRC's happyland truth.

I made a allegation/complaint about this trip...the special inspection was a result of my complaint. It took that to get the NRC off their lazy ass. I am one of a handful of outside people in the USA who ever initiated a special inspection at a nuclear plant, and the NRC admitted it. I am even a much rarer breed as this cascaded into two special inspections. I had help from River Bend insiders employees. The employees feel too intimidated to raise issues with the NRC or Entergy. There was a ton of broken or degraded equipment to show up in that trip. It occurred over and over again without correction.

River Bend and the Waterford nuclear plants are very troubled facilities.

I am a respected whistleblower and nuclear power plant safety advocate. I work closely with the NRC over many issues.

I write up everything on my blog: 

"NRC: Proof I Instigated The 2014 Christmas River Bend plant Scram Special Inspection"

http://steamshovel2002.blogspot.com/2015/07/nrc-proof-i-instigated-2014-christmas.html 

Now you know the whole truth.

Sincerely,

Mike Mulligan

Hinsdale, NH

***From: Mike Mulligan

To mschleifstein@nola.com 

Sep 13 at 8:30 PM  

Mark, 

It speaks a lot when you asked for the simulator picture, they didn’t make back flips trying to schedule you for a trip into a simulator demonstration. Why are they so fixated on destructive secrecy? They should be proud to show the simulator it off. My guess is the simulator is obsolete and if they modeled the plant in detail it would slow down or freeze the scenario.

Remember the NRC dinged River Bend in 2005 about simulator fidelity issues. I talked the senior inspector about this 2005 violation within weeks after the Christmas trip. I told the inspector I thought there were simulator fidelity issues in the 2014 Christmas scam. The NRC inspectors were terrified and they knew employees were talking to me. I said the simulator was degraded in 2005, why didn’t the NRC completely clear this out in 2005? And keep it cleared out. Why doesn’t these big nuclear utilities tremble in absolute fear when the NRC says boo?  

The NTSB demands airplane cockpit videos and voice recording. It is a wonderful training opportunity. Increasingly the NTSB is requiring accident and full time video and voice recordings in all trains. Why isn’t it required in the control rooms of all nuclear power plants? The police departments throughout the nation are beginning to use small cameras and voice full time on all cops and in their police cars. Can you imagine if the NRC was forced by policy to release the video recording of the control room on their bungled Christmas scram? You would have been horrified by what you saw on and during the Christmas trip...you wouldn't have to be a expert to interpret it. It would have deeply transformed Entergy and the industry for the better. That is how powerful these guys are (transparency). Don’t go looking for that nuclear plant accident video recording…the industry agreed decades ago to never install video recorder in any US control room because it is such a powerful public tool

***From: Mike Mulligan

To mschleifstein@nola.com

Sep 13 at 8:45 PM  

You get what is going on here, we are overly dependent on the NRC’s and licensees interpretation of what went on in the control room or events in the plant. There is self-interest and protection going on here. An objective democratic video and voice recording of say the River Bend Christmas scram would allow the multitudes to make up their minds on the competence of the NRC and Entergy.    

This was written for you: 

 http://steamshovel2002.blogspot.com/2015/09/truth.html

Baton Rouge: "The Advocate"

***From: Michael Mulligan

To: awold@theadvocate.com 

Sep 15 at 9:23 AM 

Amy,   

I made a allegation/complaint about this trip...the special inspection was a result of my complaint.  I am one of a handful of outside people in the USA who ever initiated a special inspection at a nuclear plant, and the NRC admitted it. I am even a much rarer breed as this cascaded into two special inspections. I had help from River Bend insiders employees. The employees feel too intimidated to raise issues with the NRC or Entergy. There was a ton of broken or degraded equipment to show up in that trip. It occurred over and over again without correction.

River Bend and the Waterford nuclear plants are very troubled facilities.

I am a respected whistleblower and nuclear power plant safety advocate. I work closely with the NRC over many issues.

I write up everything on my blog:

"NRC: Proof I Instigated The 2014 Christmas River Bend plant Scram Special Inspection"

http://steamshovel2002.blogspot.com/2015/07/nrc-proof-i-instigated-2014-christmas.html

Now you know the whole truth.

Sincerely,

Mike Mulligan

Hinsdale, NH

1-603-209-420

***From Mike Mulligan

To awold@theadvocate.com 

Sep 15 at 9:52 PM  

http://allthingsnuclear.org/the-saturday-night-live-approach-to-nuclear-safety-more-cowbell/

The exact some problem I face when I first seen the River Bend Christmas scram. It stands way outside how much troubles Entergy is having with their nuclear Fleet. They are just not spending enough money on the fleet.

In the good old days the NRC used their rules and policies to control the bad actors in the industry. In the recent decades, all the new rules and policies are aimed at controlling and limiting the local NRC inspectors.

Entergy Talking Out Both Sides Of Their Mouth.

Everything is just a financial game with these guys: "(Denault) what’s the right value play"

CEO Denault about Possible shutdown of Fitzpatrick

"Entergy will need to consider “what’s the right value play as well as what’s the right allocation of resources. And does that free up cash that we could use elsewhere,” he said." 

Entergy's official Noyes on Possible shutdown of Pilgrim 

“If the corporation finds that the cost of making the improvements of the plant exceed the value of the plant, the corporation may decide to shut the plant down,” said David Noyes, the plant’s director of regulatory and performance improvement."

 

 

Pilgrim nuclear plant says it may shut down

The article is on the front page right side.

The NRC has been talking to these High Officials for years...I bet Entergy warned them we will just pull the plug if you identify all our problems. So the NRC in recent years was pulling their punches?

Remember Fitzpatrick is in the same boat with Entergy threatening to close them also.   

Pilgrim mulls whether to spend millions on safety upgrades

By David Abel Globe Staff  September 17, 2015 

Officials at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station are considering whether they can afford the multimillion-dollar safety improvements and other reforms required by federal officials. If not, they say, they might close the plant. 

After the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission downgraded the plant’s safety rating earlier this month, Pilgrim joined two reactors in Arkansas as the least safe in the country. Expensive repairs are needed to raise the safety rating of the 43-year-old plant, run by Entergy Corp. since 1999. 

“If the corporation finds that the cost of making the improvements of the plant exceed the value of the plant, the corporation may decide to shut the plant down,” said David Noyes, the plant’s director of regulatory and performance improvement. 

He added: “No business decision has been made about Pilgrim. We’re looking at specific conditions, and analyzing weaknesses associated with the plant. As of right now, we don’t know the costs.” 

The plant could also be shut down by the regulatory commission. A succession of unplanned shutdowns of its reactor in recent years, and inspections that revealed significant safety problems, resulted in its being moved to the next-to-lowest performance category two weeks ago. 

None of the nation’s 99 reactors are currently in the lowest category, but if Pilgrim fails to comply with federal requirements, the commission will move it there. Such action would require the plant to close, at least temporarily. 

The NRC is smoking dope with 142,857 years.

Part of the problem here is the risk calculations are set too low. If they came up with a chance of core damage say of once every 50 years, everyone would have been force to confront the Pilgrim issue much earlier. They would have never allowed them to get this bad. Just so you understand, core damage never takes out a plant (yet. We should have a computer model where events at the plant can estimate the political damage of a credibility meltdown leading to a plant shutdown. We are losing many plants to credibility meltdowns and none from core damage. Is the bad stories such as Fukushima, VY and Pilgrim cumulative...putting bad stories in the minds of the public?

So risk of shutdown constitutes the risk of core damage and a loss of credibility...the lost of credibility accident occurs much more frequently.

Again, will the Pilgrim saga force the hand of NY and entergy to prematurely pull the plug on Indian Point? It sure likes like when electric prices are heading up, the merchant model is the goose who laid a golden egg. When prices are going down, the merchants are the anchor chained to your leg that is going to drown you when you are the weakest?  

The commission said the plant’s level of risk is “low to moderate.” Entergy officials said that the odds of an event occurring that would damage its reactor core, before they made recent repairs, was one in every once every 142,857 years. 

Pilgrim, which provides an average of about 12.5 percent of the state’s electricity, is located 35 miles from Boston; about 5 million people live and work within a 50-mile radius of the plant. 

In a recent letter to Entergy officials, Governor Charlie Baker urged Entergy to “make certain that the plant meets the highest safety standards.” 

“We cannot risk the well-being of the residents of the commonwealth,” Baker wrote. 

Baker added that he was troubled that Entergy “has failed to take appropriate corrective actions to address the causes of several unplanned shutdowns dating back to 2013.”

Baker has said he sees Pilgrim as part of a “balanced approach” to the state’s energy needs, while other state lawmakers have long called for the plant to be closed. 

Entergy was awarded a 20-year operating license in 2012 to continue operating Pilgrim, but opponents are hoping to use the downgrade to pressure the company to shutter the plant now. 

On Wednesday, state Senator Dan Wolf, a Harwich Democrat, met with advocates from the Sierra Club, the Environmental League of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, and others. 

They discussed how to advance bills in the Legislature that require the company to pay fees to store its spent nuclear fuels at Pilgrim, and that would force Entergy to show that it has enough money to cover the costs of securing its spent fuel after the plant closes.

“These bills will get across to Entergy that they need to bake these costs into running the plant and think of its financial viability,” Wolf said. “They’re going to have to make financial decisions.” 

Entergy officials declined to provide information about the plant’s operating costs or revenue. Although the company’s stock price has plummeted this year by nearly 30 percent, nuclear regulatory officials have maintained that Entergy is solvent. 

In a letter sent this summer to an environmental group in New York, William Dean, director of nuclear reactor regulation at the commission, wrote that Entergy’s “current financial qualifications are adequate to continue safe operation at Pilgrim.” 

In response to questions from the Globe about the company’s finances, Lauren Burm, an Entergy spokeswoman, wrote: “Entergy does not disclose in our investor relations or Securities and Exchange Commission filings, individual plant profit, or operating cost information. It is considered proprietary business information.” 

Entergy officials have six months to present the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with a detailed improvement plan. Commission officials will then send teams of inspectors to the plant to review the causes of the unplanned shutdowns over the past three years and to determine whether equipment needs to be replaced and whether the plant’s management needs to improve safety. 

The commission bills Entergy for the inspections, which federal officials estimate will cost nearly $2 million. Entergy officials said they have already spent about $70 million to provide safety and security upgrades to the plant since the 2011 radiation leak at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear station, which has the same basic design as Pilgrim. 

“We have a number of actions already ongoing to address performance gaps identified,” Noyes said. “We have existing action plans and we plan to execute those.” 

State energy officials declined interview requests about how Massachusetts would make up for the lost power if Pilgrim closes. 

If a closure were to happen soon, it would come as the state has made drastic reductions to its reliance on coal. Last year, the Mt. Tom power plant in Holyoke became the last of the state’s three coal plants to schedule a permanent shutdown. The Salem Harbor Power Station closed last year, while Brayton Point in Somerset is scheduled to stop operating in 2017. 

The state now gets about 58 percent of its energy from natural gas, while oil supplies about 9 percent, coal about 3 percent, and renewable energy about 2 percent. The rest comes from hydroelectric power and other sources. 

The state would likely have to import more natural gas, which would have an impact on its carbon emissions. Nuclear power doesn’t emit carbon. 

“The administration continues to engage with the Legislature on Massachusetts’ energy needs and is committed to addressing the impact of power plant retirements on energy markets,” said Katie Gronendyke, a spokeswoman for the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, in a statement.

Pilgrim: White Safety Relief Valve Problems

August 26, 2015
EN 15-024 

OFFICE OF ENFORCEMENT NOTIFICATION OF SIGNIFICANT ENFORCEMENT ACTION

Subject: ISSUANCE OF FINAL SIGNIFICANCE DETERMINATION AND NOTICE OF VIOLATION

This is to inform the Commission that a Notice of Violation (NOV) associated with a White Significance Determination Process finding will be issued on or about September 1, 2015, to Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc. (licensee) as a result of an inspection at Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station (Pilgrim).

The White finding involved the licensee’s failure to establish measures to promptly identify and correct a significant condition adverse to quality, or take corrective actions to preclude repetition, relating to a component that is essential to perform the Automatic Depressurization System (ADS) safety-related functions. Specifically, the licensee failed to identify that the ADS ‘A’ safety/relief valve (SRV) did not open upon manual actuation on February 9, 2013. The licensee therefore did not take action to preclude repetition, which resulted in the failure of the ADS ‘C’ SRV to operate upon manual actuation on January 27, 2015. Also, because the licensee was not aware of the ‘A’ SRV’s inoperability from February 9, 2013, until January 27, 2015, a period greater than the allowed Technical Specification (TS) outage time, the required actions of the TS were not followed.

A NOV is included based on the licensee’s failure to establish measures to assure that
conditions adverse to quality are promptly identified and corrected, and failure to assure that the cause of the condition is determined and corrective action taken to preclude repetition in accordance with 10 CFR 50, Appendix B, Criterion XVI, “Corrective Action”.

Oyster Creek: Yellow Safety Relief Valve Problems.

This is probably the model for end-of-life plants in the future. The plant is operating with obscenely obsolete equipment and in its closing years it is just not worth wasting money on a dying plant.

You catch here with these severe safety relief valve (electromatic relief valve) problems it seems to only occur in plants who are severely troubled and many other component have been implicated in degradations.  

What I never got, it was a initial design defect...why did it only show up at end of life?

OFFICE OF ENFORCEMENT NOTIFICATION OF SIGNIFICANT ENFORCEMENT ACTION Subject: ISSUANCE OF FINAL SIGNIFICANCE DETERMINATION AND NOTICE OF VIOLATION

This is to inform the Commission that two separate Notices of Violation (NOV), one associated with a Yellow Significance Determination Process (SDP) finding and one associated with a White SDP finding, will be issued on or about April 27, 2015, to Exelon Generation Company, LLC (Exelon) as a result of separate inspections at its Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Station. The Yellow finding represents an issue of substantial safety significance. The White finding represents an issue of low to moderate safety significance. These findings will result in additional NRC inspection and potentially other NRC action.

The Yellow finding involved the failure by Exelon to establish adequate measures for the selection and review for suitability of application of materials, parts, equipment, and processes that are essential to the safety-related functions of the electromatic relief valves (EMRVs). Specifically, since original installation of the EMRVs in 1969, until the valves were redesigned and reinstalled during the 2014 refueling outage, the EMRV actuators were inadequate because when they were placed in an environment where the actuator was subject to vibration associated with plant operation, the mechanical tolerance between posts and guides created a condition where the springs could wedge between the guides and the posts, jamming the actuator plunger assembly. In addition, given the original design of the valve, the maintenance refurbishing processes were not adequate to maintain the required internal tolerances to prevent excessive fretting and wear of the internal components. As a result, the staff determined that two EMRVs were inoperable for greater than the allowed Technical Specification outage time of 24 hours.

The White finding involved the failure by Exelon to review the suitability of a new emergency diesel generator (EDG) belt maintenance process that was essential to a safety-related function of the EDGs and to verify the acceptance criteria of that process. Specifically, from May 13, 2005, to September 9, 2014, Exelon changed the method for tensioning the cooling fan belt on the EDG from measuring belt deflection to measuring belt frequency and did not verify the adequacy of the acceptance criteria stated for the new method. As a result, the specified belt frequency imposed a stress above the fatigue endurance limit of the shaft material, making the EDG cooling fan shaft susceptible to fatigue and failure which occurred on July 28, 2014. As a result, the staff determined that EDG No. 2 was inoperable for greater than the allowed Technical Specification outage time of 7 days...

Dresden: More White Safety Relief Valve Problems?

This was a prolong event with uncontrollable quality in the safety relief valves (electromatic relief valve). I don't think the white finding is significant enough to create a organizational behavior change across Pilgrim, Dresden or Oyster Creek. 

September 16, 2015
EA-15-115

SUBJECT: FINAL SIGNIFICANCE DETERMINATION OF WHITE FINDING AND NOTICE OFVIOLATION; NRC INSPECTION REPORT NO. 05000237/2015010; DRESDEN NUCLEAR POWER STATION

This letter provides you the final significance determination of the preliminary White finding discussed in our previous communication dated July 1, 2015, which included U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Inspection Report No. 05000237/2015002; 05000249/2015002; 07200037/2015001. This report is available in the NRC’s Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) at Accession Number ML15219A500. The finding involved the failure of the Unit 2 “C” electromatic relief valve (ERV) to perform its intended safety function. 

Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) Part 50, Appendix B, Criterion III, Design Control, requires, in part, that measures be established for the selection and review for suitability of application of materials, parts, equipment, and processes that are essential to the safety-related functions of the structures, systems, and components. Technical Specification 3.4.3, Safety and Relief Valves, Limiting Condition for Operation requires, in part, that in Modes 1, 2, and 3, the relief function of five relief valves shall be OPERABLE. Required Action A states that if one relief valve is inoperable, then restore the valve to operable status within 14 days. Required Action B states, in part, that if the Required Action and associated Completion Time are not met, then (1) be in Mode 3 within 12 hours and (2) be in Mode 4 within 36 hours.

Technical Specification 3.5.1, ECCS Operating, Limiting Condition for Operation requires, in part, that in Modes 1, 2, and 3, with pressure above 150 pounds per square inch gauge (psig), the Automatic Depressurization System (ADS) function of five relief valves shall be OPERABLE. Required Action H, states that, if one ADS valve is inoperable, then restore the valve to operable status within 14 days. Required Action I states, in part, that if the Required Action H and associated Completion Time are not met, then (1) be in Mode 3 within 12 hours, and (2) reduce reactor steam dome pressure to less than 150 psig within 36 hours.

Contrary to the above, from December 1, 2009, to February 7, 2015, the licensee failed to establish measures for the review of suitability of application for the ADS electromatic relief valve (ERV) actuators, which are essential to perform the safety-related reactor vessel depressurization and overpressure protection functions. This resulted in a failure of the 2C ERV, and an indeterminate period of inoperability and unavailability greater than allowed by Technical Specifications 3.4.3 and 3.5.1 during operating cycle D2C24. The 2C ERV inoperability during the operating cycle was identified after the failure of the valve during its first operational test in mid-cycle outage D2F56. Additionally, because the licensee was not aware of the valve’s inoperability between 2013 and 2015 during operating cycle D2C24, the required actions in Actions 3.4.3 A and B, and 3.5.1 H and were not followed.

What the Hell is Wrong with the McGuire Plant?

9/16/15 11 AM

05000369/370

I never get anything bad NRC reports about these guys.  They seem to be able to stay up at power. No scram problems. They are the kid in the class you never hear a peep out of? He got to be sick. A two unit site, we should be hearing about something all the time?

How the hell do these guys stay out trouble?

Sitting on a beautiful Lake Norman, a few miles from Charlotte and modern civilization and shopping malls. It must be sweet living. The only drawback is it is in the south.

Not a big deal yet...cool coincidence?

Update 9/18

Not a big deal yet...cool coincidence though?

Power Reactor	Event Number: 51406
Facility: MCGUIRE Region: 2 State: NC Unit: [1] [2] [ ] RX Type: [1] W-4-LP,[2] W-4-LP NRC Notified By: RYAN WHISNANT HQ OPS Officer: VINCE KLCO	Notification Date: 09/17/2015 Notification Time: 21:32 [ET] Event Date: 09/17/2015 Event Time: 16:10 [EDT] Last Update Date: 09/17/2015
Emergency Class: NON EMERGENCY 10 CFR Section: 26.719 - FITNESS FOR DUTY	Person (Organization): MARVIN SYKES (R2DO)

Unit	SCRAM Code	RX CRIT	Initial PWR	Initial RX Mode	Current PWR	Current RX Mode
1	N	Y	100	Power Operation	100	Power Operation
2	N	N	0	Refueling	0	Refueling

Event Text

MINIATURE ALCOHOL BOTTLE DISCOVERED INSIDE THE PROTECTED AREA "A miniature alcohol bottle, containing trace amounts of liquid, was discovered inside the protected area. Site security took possession of the bottle and removed it from the protected area." The licensee notified the NRC Resident Inspector.

Palo Verde: Electric Breaker Rapid Combustion : )

Can you trust the officials at Palo Verde nuclear Power plant Ever Again?

This was a electrical explosion plain and clear.

Prettifying equipment failures: I now don't trust these guys...

So it looked and sounded and they entered a explosion classification procedure....but its actually rapid combustion. Only in a nuclear plant. They are they too timid to put the truth down on paper. How widespread is prettifying documents at Palo Verde?

I think it demeans the  people who had to respond to this and the potential they all face in a power plant 

As a result, an Emergency Classification of HU2.2, EXPLOSION was declared due to the Load Center breaker failure and noise and visible indication observed in the field. 

Power Reactor	Event Number: 51403
Facility: PALO VERDE Region: 4 State: AZ Unit: [ ] [2] [ ] RX Type: [1] CE,[2] CE,[3] CE NRC Notified By: ROBERT PIERCE HQ OPS Officer: JEFF HERRERA	Notification Date: 09/17/2015 Notification Time: 02:53 [ET] Event Date: 09/16/2015 Event Time: 23:01 [MST] Last Update Date: 09/17/2015
Emergency Class: NON EMERGENCY 10 CFR Section: 50.72(a) (1) (i) - EMERGENCY DECLARED	Person (Organization): THOMAS FARNHOLTZ (R4DO) WILLIAM GOTT (IRD) MARC DAPAS (RA) SCOTT MORRIS (NRR) WILLIAM DEAN (NRR)

Unit	SCRAM Code	RX CRIT	Initial PWR	Initial RX Mode	Current PWR	Current RX Mode
2	N	Y	100	Power Operation	100	Power Operation

Event Text

NOTIFICATION OF UNUSUAL EVENT DUE TO RAPID COMBUSTION OF A LOAD CENTER BREAKER "The following event description is based on information currently available. If through subsequent reviews of this event, additional information is identified that is pertinent to this event, or alters the information being provided at this time a follow-up notification will be made via the ENS or under the reporting requirements of 10CFR50.73. "Non Class Load Center Breaker, 2ENGN-L04 failed, resulting an a visible observation of rapid combustion and resultant charring (burned area) of the breaker enclosure and housing. No physical deformation to the breaker housing or surrounding area has been identified. The rapid combustion self-extinguished immediately following the audible and visible combustion event. As a result, an Emergency Classification of HU2.2, EXPLOSION was declared due to the Load Center breaker failure and noise and visible indication observed in the field. "The plant was, and continues to operate at 100% full power operations on normal power alignment. The 2ENGN-L04 Non-Class Load Center breaker supplies power to non-essential service loads and has no immediate impact to plant operation or safety mitigating systems. The plant remains stable and the event did not adversely affect the safe operation of the plant or health and safety of the public. "The NRC Resident Inspector has been notified."

A Poor Maintenance Fiasco at Fermi

Losing an air compressor is a nasty accident because there is many air operated valves. 

Three important pumps lost and discovered two valve that are broken? I junk plant.

***It looks like the plant simulator didn't model single LOOP operation...

These guys should have made the decision to conservatively shutdown before doing this runaway maintenance monster. It is a outright mania trying to keep these plants up a power no matter how degraded the plant is.

***A pattern of panic scrams and losing control of the cooling systems. Again, you catch how two poor maintenance problem led to the scram. 

On March 19, 2015 the unit automatically scrammed due to actuation of the Reactor Protection System function of OPRM Upscale. The unit had just transitioned to single loop operation after operators secured a reactor recirculation pump due to the loss of its normal and emergency cooling water supply.

***The LER: On March 19, 2015, at 0647 hours, the Fermi 2 annunciators indicated a cooling water leak in the drywell. The Reactor Building Closed Cooling Water (RBCCW) system [[CC]] was isolated and both divisions of the Emergency Equipment Cooling Water (EECW) system were started. Approximately four minutes later signs of Division 1 EECW pump cavitation were observed indicating that the leak affected the north (A) reactor recirculation pump [[AD]] cooling. The north (A) reactor recirculation pump was tripped at 0652 to prevent motor damage from loss of cooling and the reactor transitioned. 

Sounds like they had a water hammer... 

PRELIMINARY NOTIFICATION

September 15, 2015

PRELIMINARY NOTIFICATION OF EVENT OR UNUSUAL OCCURRENCE - PNO-III-15-009

This preliminary notification constitutes EARLY notice of events of POSSIBLE safety or public interest significance. Some of the information may not yet be fully verified or evaluated and is basically all that is known by the Region III staff on this date.

 Fermi Power Plant (Fermi 2)
DTE Energy Company
Newport, MI

SUBJECT: UNPLANNED SHUTDOWN GREATER THAN 72 HOURS FOLLOWING THE LOSS OF COOLING WATER IN THE TURBINE BUILDING

 At 11:05 p.m. (EDT) on September 13, 2015, operators manually shut down (scrammed) Fermi 2 from 100 percent power after attempts to correct a malfunction of a nonsafety-related cooling water system in the turbine building were unsuccessful and the three pumps in the system shut down. The malfunction arose earlier that evening while operators were working on the cooling water system heat exchangers. 

All control rods inserted and all plant systems responded normally to the scram. The loss of the nonsafety-related cooling water system resulted in the loss of the station compressed air system, which affected valves that are operated by air. Operators took the appropriate actions for those affected valves.

The licensee is investigating the cause of the malfunction and will be repairing two valves that were identified as in need of repair. On September 14, the licensee successfully restarted the nonsafety-related cooling water system. The licensee stated that the reactor would be shutdown for at least 72 hours.

The NRC resident inspector was notified of the scram, promptly responded to the plant, and monitored activities throughout the early morning. The NRC is currently monitoring the troubleshooting, repair, and restart activities.

River Bend: Safety-Conscious Work Environment

RIVER BEND STATION – NRC PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION AND RESOLUTION INSPECTION REPORT 05000458/2015008

The licensee maintained a safety-conscious work environment in which personnel were willing to raise nuclear safety concerns without fear of retaliation.

 

Supposedly they allow their employees to raise any safety concern without fear of retaliation…but they just don’t listen to them. The blow the employees off.

So an individual would write up CR or other document…the manger would sign off with some hokey response without the first writer seeing it or wanting to see it. The first writer would think I cleared my conscience, even knowing the problem wasn’t cleared. Entergy is famous for this across the fleet.  

The NRC doesn’t inforce falsification or a intent to be deceptive or falsification.

I like the NRC to inspect, employees raise safety concerns and Entergy immediately fixes it. 

SEQUOYAH Indicates Big Problem with 10 CFR 50:59s

Why do I get the feeling these nuclear don’t fear the NRC at all?

Why do I think the NRC is overwhelmed by 10 CFR 50:59s. Just throw in a bum 50:59s or none all…the NRC will never discover it. If they discover it, it will just be inconsequential ding.

Remember this is just a sample of 18 screening. We never get an idea of the total screening. They do have a list screening on the dockets. 

Evaluations of Changes, Tests, and Experiments: The inspectors reviewed eight safety evaluations performed pursuant to Title 10, Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 50.59, “Changes, tests, and experiments,” to determine if the evaluations were adequate and that prior NRC approval was obtained as appropriate. The inspectors also reviewed 18 screenings where licensee personnel had determined that a 10 CFR 50.59 evaluation was not necessary. The inspectors reviewed these documents to determine if:

You see the extremely dangerous reactionary stance of the agency…they discovered these defects many years after the change or new gear.

The NRC isn’t up these nuke plant asses, don’t you dare make that change without doing a proper 50:59 or accurate comprehensive safety evaluation when the 50:59 is ongoing. 

SUBJECT: SEQUOYAH NUCLEAR PLANT - NRC EVALUATION OF CHANGES, TESTS, AND EXPERIMENTS AND PERMANENT PLANT MODIFICATIONS INSPECTION REPORT 05000327/2015007 AND 05000328/2015007

NRC inspectors documented five findings of very low safety significance (Green) in this report.

Five of these findings involved violations of NRC requirements; one of these violations was determined to be Severity Level IV under the traditional enforcement process.

Indian Point Pressurizer Safety Valve: a 66% Failure Rate

 Safety Valves In Our Nuclear Power Plants Going Wild

 

These are the guys with all the scrams and shutdowns. 

Condition Due to Two Pressurizer Code Safety Valves Discovered Outside Their As-Found Lift Setpoint Test Acceptance Criteria"Indian Point Unit No. 3 Docket No. 50-286 DPR-64

On July 1, 2015, Engineering was notified by Wyle Laboratories that two of three Pressurizer {AB} Code Safety Valves (RC-PCV-464 and RC-PCV-468) {RV} removed during the spring 2015 refueling outage (RO) failed their As-Found lift set point test acceptance criteria (2411 - 2559 psig) . The As-Found set pressure testing acceptance criterion for operability is 2485 +/-3%. The SVs were .removed during the last refueling outage (RO) in the spring of 2015 and sent offsite for testing. Testing was performed within one year of removal as required by the Inservice Testing Program. Testing found SV RCPCV- 464 as-found lift pressure was 2573 (0.5% above the allowable As-Found *upper limit of 2559 psig), and SV RC-PCV-468 as-found lift pressure was 2379 psig (1.2% below allowable AS-Found lower limit of 2411 psig), which is outside their set pressure range acceptance criterion. The remaining SV lift tested satisfactorily. All three SVs were found with zero seat leakage. During the RO all three SVs were removed and replaced with certified pre-tested spare SVs. The SVs installed during the RO were As-Left tested to 2485 +/-1% with zero seat leakage in accordance with procedure 3-PT-R5A. Technical Specification (TS) 3.4.10 (Pressurizer Safety Valves), requires three pressurizer safety valves to be operable with lift settings set at greater than 2460 psig and less than 2510 psig. TS Surveillance Requirement (SR) 3.4.10.1 requires each PSV to be verified operable in accordance with the Inservice Testing Program. The condition was recorded in the Indian Point Energy Center (IPEC) Corrective Action Program (CAP) in Condition Report CR-IP3-2015-03710 and CR-1P3-2015-03708.

The pressurizer safety valves (SVs) are totally enclosed pop type, spring loaded, selfactuating 6 inch by 6 inch valves manufactured by Crosby Valve Company {C711}, Model HB-BP-86 Type E. The SVs are designed to prevent the system pressure from exceeding the system Safety Limit (SL) of 2735 psig, which is 110% of the design pressure.

The Cause of Event

The exact cause of failure of valves RC-PCV-464 and RC-PCV-468 is not known at this time. The most probable cause of By RC-PCV-464 lifting greater than 3% of its nominal setpoint was setpoint drift. The most probable cause of RC-PCV-468 lifting within less than 3% of its nominal setpoint was spring relaxation. The two valves that failed As-Found testing criteria (valve RC-PCV-464 and RC-PCV-468) will be disassembled and inspected to determine the cause of the failure.

They can't see the degradation at power. If they seen it, they would quickly have to shutdown per tech specs. No rush worrying about about if it is spring. Remember in Pilgrim, they damage the spring on the test stand. 

I think it is a plant design defect. If there were four safety valves, then they never would have crossed a tech spec shutdown. I guess only some required tech spec conservative shutdowns are applicable.   

TS 3.4.10 Condition B (Required action and associated completion time not met or Two or more pressurizer safety valves inoperable) required action B.l is be in Mode 3 in 6 hours and B.2 be in Mode 4 within 12 hours. This TS action was not performed and the actions of Condition B not implemented, the condition is a TB prohibited condition. In the UFSAR Chapter 14 analysis, the opening setpoint of the three PSRVs is assumed to be at +/-4% of the nominal 2485 psig value for applicable Chapter 14 transients…

Professional Reactor Operator Society

Nucpros by Robert Meyer...man he is a old work horse.

Why did his internet site go black?


It is like they run their plants?

Frank Maciuska

September 9 at 9:19am

Is anyone else having a problem getting to "nucpros.com"?

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• 

  Professional Reactor Operator Society The website has been having some issues lately! I'll follow up with our office manager and see if there's a projected fix date

 

UCS: Fort Calhoun and River Bend

The way we should should look at these thing; what if we had a hundred 2011 Fort Calhouns running like this in the USA? What if we had a 100 River Bends cira 2014? Fort Calhoun and River Bend are in the same region IV. It is very trouble region. The nrc have a unique solution for this, they slough off work through plants like San Onophe through permanent shutdown. The NRC let San Onophe run to ground allowing them to run like Fort Calhoun for decades. Very quickly we'd come up with a meltdown, partial meltdown or industry ending scandal.  

I contend with 10 to 20 bad actor plants like River Bend and  Fort Calhoun running at the same time, the NRC gets over burdened and become effectively blinded...  

Hence, with San Onophe, Fort Calhoun, River Bend, Waterford and the rest...region IV was over overburdened and they missed a lot...

The Saturday Night Live Approach to Nuclear Safety: More Cowbell!

Dave Lochbaum, director, Nuclear Safety Project

September 15, 2015

  

Fission Stories #197

The April 8, 2000, Saturday Night Live broadcast featured a skit with cast members pretending to be the rock group Blue Oyster Cult in the recording studio with a famous music producer, played by actor Christopher Walken. The skit is remembered for Walken’s character stating “I gotta have more cowbell.”

The NRC’s Reactor Oversight Process (ROP) needs more cowbell, too.

The Fort Calhoun nuclear plant shut down in April 2011 for a refueling outage. The outage was planned to last a handful of weeks while workers replaced spent fuel assemblies with new assemblies and performed routine maintenance and testing activities. The plan went awry when the ROP identified safety problems that needed to be corrected before the reactor could be restarted.

The operators restarted Fort Calhoun in December 2013 after a short refueling outage morphed into a 32-month safety restoration outage. On March 30, 2015, the NRC announced that it was returning Fort Calhoun to normal handling under the ROP. The NRC also reported expending over 60,000 hours since December 2011 on inspection, assessment and licensing tasks at Fort Calhoun.

60,000 hours is a number without context. To help put this value in context, the NRC reported having expended 6,652 hours, 6,612 hours, and 6,782 hours of total oversight effort at the average nuclear plant in 2011, 2012, and 2013, respectively. So the average nuclear plant received an average of 6,682 hours of oversight from the NRC annually.

Between 2012 and 2014, Fort Calhoun received an average of 18,462 hours of oversight effort each year from the NRC.

Thus, Fort Calhoun received the equivalent of 2.76 nuclear plants’ worth of regulatory oversight attention from the NRC between 2012 and 2014.

Too Little Much, Too Late

Figure 1 shows where the NRC placed Fort Calhoun within the ROP’s Action Matrix each quarter from the inception in the fourth quarter of 2000 until late 2014. 

Fig. 1 (click to enlarge) (Source: UCS)

When performance fell within expected ranges, Fort Calhoun went into Column 1. When performance levels dropped, Fort Calhoun moved into Column 2, Column 3, Column 4, and Column 5 (Column 5 marking when the NRC placed Fort Calhoun under its Manual Chapter 0350 process for especially troubled reactors.)

On two occasions (3^rd quarter 2007 and 2^nd quarter 2008), the NRC returned Fort Calhoun to Column 2 from Column 3 after determining that safety performance had improved sufficiently.  In the 3^rd quarter 2008, the NRC returned Fort Calhoun to Column 1 and routine oversight activities.

What’s wrong with this picture?

As UCS documented in  No More Fukushimas; No More Fort Calhouns fact sheet, many of the safety problems had existed at the Fort Calhoun plant since 1996. Several dated back to the original construction of the plant in the late1960s and early 1970s. In other words, both the NRC’s baseline inspections (those applied to Fort Calhoun when it resided in Column 1) and its supplemental inspections (those applied when the plant was in Columns 2 and 3) failed to detect ALL of these safety problems.

The problems that kept Fort Calhoun shut down for 32 months were not introduced in 2009 and 2010 after the NRC returned Fort Calhoun to Column 1—they existed all along. Yet the NRC’s ROP missed them all. The ROP missed every single one of them, until after the first quarter of 2011. After that time, finding safety problems was like shooting fish in a barrel—NRC inspectors could hardly turn around without finding yet another safety problem that had to be fixed prior to restart.

So how could more cowbell improve nuclear plant safety?

Rather than expending so much time and effort ensuring that the barn door has been closed, safety would be better served by noticing that it’s open sooner. Cowbells should have sounded long before the first quarter of 2011.

UCS’s fact sheet documented many safety problems that existed at Fort Calhoun for years before the ROP’s inception in 2000. Two of the safety problems involved the emergency diesel generators (EDGs).

EDGs are among the most safety significant components at the plant. Consequently, they receive considerable oversight attention by the NRC. Yet that attention failed to identify either of these two problems that had existed since at least 1990.

And it was not just one miss or even two misses by one NRC inspector—it was a lot of misses by a lot of NRC inspectors over a lot of years. A search of ADAMS, the NRC’s online digital library, identified 39 inspections conducted at Fort Calhoun by the NRC between 2000 and 2010 inclusive that included some oversight of the EDGs.

Something is fundamentally wrong with safety inspections of highly safety significant components that fail to notice safety problems. Finding safety problems isn’t one of the reasons for conducting the safety inspections—it’s the only reason for doing them.

And yet many safety problems remained undetected until 2011 when it took an army of workers more than two years to correct them all.

Our Takeaway

Fort Calhoun is not an isolated case. It marked the 52^nd time that a U.S. reactor had to remain shut down longer than a year while safety problems were corrected. The majority of these year-plus outages involved a myriad of safety problems that had existed for months and sometimes years before being noticed.

Consider how safe Fort Calhoun really was on April 10, 2011, or during the preceding years when it operated despite a large and growing number of undetected, uncorrected safety problems. The NRC placed Fort Calhoun in Columns 1, 2, and 3 of the ROP’s Action Matrix. In reality, the presence of the same safety problems that put Fort Calhoun into Column 5 in the third quarter of 2011 should have had it there in the fourth quarter of 2000. The safety problems were there in 2000—it took the NRC another decade to notice them.

Fig. 2 (Source: UCS)

Safety and economics both scream out for the NRC to prevent the 53^rd time. As more and more pre-existing safety problems accumulate at an operating reactor, the path shortens for an initiating event to lead to nuclear disaster. Put another way, defense-in-depth works better when there are fewer and smaller holes in each protective barrier.

Likewise, finding and fixing problems sooner results in better financial performance. UCS estimated the cost of the 51 year-plus reactor outages before Fort Calhoun to be over $80 billion.

The NRC should construct timelines for each major safety problem corrected during the 2011-2013 outage at Fort Calhoun. The timelines should indicate when the safety problems were introduced and the subsequent NRC inspections that examined the associated system or component. Because the safety problems existed for long durations, many NRC inspection procedures will correlate to each safety problem. The NRC should then evaluate changes to the inspection procedures that increase the likelihood of detecting similar problems in the future. The NRC does not inspect everything; instead, the NRC audits samples. Conducting a Fort Calhoun retrospective would allow the NRC to adjust the number of items selected for each sample or revise the choice of items within the samples or change how it evaluates sample items so as to become more capable at finding safety problems.

The safety problems at Fort Calhoun were not invisible—they were easily found after the 1^st quarter of 2011. The NRC must figure out how to make them visible sooner. The NRC must detect safety problems sooner and ring cowbells as the barn doors are opening. 

More cowbell = better nuclear safety.

“Fission Stories” is a weekly feature by Dave Lochbaum. For more information on nuclear power safety, see the nuclear safety section of UCS’s website and our interactive map, the Nuclear Power Information Tracker.

Hey Palisades, Haven't Heard From You For A Long Time

AUTOMATIC REACTOR TRIP DUE TO TURBINE TRIP

"At 0117 [EDT] on 9/16/2015 a reactor trip occurred (4-hr non-emergency). The plant was at approximately 85% power performing a coastdown in preparation for a refueling outage when a Digital Electro-Hydraulic (DEH) alarm was received in the control room. Shortly following receipt of the alarm the turbine tripped. This resulted in an RPS actuation and a reactor trip on Loss of Load. The crew entered EOP-1 Standard Post Trip Actions and completed all required actions. The crew subsequently entered EOP-2 Reactor Trip Recovery.

"All full-length control rods inserted fully. Auxiliary Feedwater System actuated in response to low steam generator water levels (8-hr non-emergency). Steam generator water levels are in progress of being returned to normal operating levels. No known primary to secondary leakage. Atmospheric Steam Dump Valves lifted after the trip and subsequently reseated.

"The plant is currently stable in Mode 3 at NOP/NOT being maintained by the Turbine Bypass Valve.

"Initial investigation into the cause of the turbine trip appears to be from a DEH power supply failure.

"The NRC Resident Inspector was notified of the reactor trip at 0139 on 9/16/2015."