I'll make the case today the NY grid prices are around 25 bucks per megawatt-hour. They need on the far side of 60 bucks to making any profit. In the last two two years across the board, there has been shocking reduction of grid prices across the board in the Northeast.
My position is all bolt and baffle panel need to be replace before start-up, plus all the supports for the panals.
06/01/2016 08:42 am ET
| Updated 1 day ago
The unprecedented
degradation of critical baffle bolts in the Indian Point 2 reactor has
triggered an extensive investigation by federal officials seeking to learn why
the
Yep, I identified this too. The loose parts monitor is much like the UT detector. You can adjust the sensitivity of this device. If the sensitivity is set to low, then again you get false positives. You enter a multi dollar outage chasing ghost loose parts. Basically in order to save money, they bypass the loose parts monitor. They set the sensitivity so high it basically doesn't work.
problem was so severe, why systems designed to detect loose metal objects
failed, and whether the plant has a specific flaw that could compromise its
ageing management program.
The discovery in March
during a routine fuel change that more than 27% of the stainless steel bolts
needed to channel cooling water through active nuclear fuel rods were broken,
distorted or “missing” has prompted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to demand
answers from Entergy, which owns Indian Point 2&3 in Buchanan, NY. The NRC
will first review Entergy’s Licensee Event Report, due within a week, on the
degradation problem and regulators insist they will not allow the plant to
resume operating until critical questions are answered.
“The analysis to be
performed by Entergy regarding the bolts,” said NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan
“will need to demonstrate that the baffle-former plates would remain in place
even if a certain number of bolts failed.
This is a change in licencing. They need to do a 50:59. What does plant design and licencing say as far the acceptable amount of broken baffle bolts. It is a huge reduction of margins from initial licencing. You get it, this will be a paper whipping evaluation without any actually testing.
And those criteria will include the
safety margins. We will review Entergy’s analysis and plans before deciding if
the company’s proposed course of action is acceptable. Part of those
evaluations will include whether it intends to assess the baffle-former bolts
in Indian Point 3 in the near-term or several years from now.”
An escalating series
of problems began with an enhanced inspection of the interior of the Indian
Point 2 reactor during a scheduled refueling. New York Attorney General Eric
Schneiderman had insisted in a series of legal actions starting in 2007 that
Entergy go beyond the visual inspection by a camera lowered into the
radioactive coolant and utilize more intensive ultrasonic testing. That
revealed that 227 of the 882 bolts, more than one in four, were damaged due to
the intensive wear and tear in the interior. That is a failure rate never
recorded in any reactor in the world. And loss of the bolts and the directed
coolant could lead to a fuel meltdown.
An Expanding Problem
But as Entergy began
the slow process of removing each two-inch long, stainless steel bolt using
robotic arms and cameras under 40 feet of water, there were additional
developments impacting the NRC’s urgent need to find the reason for the massive
failure:
Basically they can dial up or down the sensitivity of the ultrasonic detectors. If they make it too sensitive, then they will have a lot of costly false positives. This will slow down the job. This is the most shocking news here. We need a clear explanation on the limitations with the UT devices. They have to replace all bolts and baffle panels. We have to know in all inspected plants where all the bolts UT'd. What percentage weren't UT'd I just can't believe it, The UT devices sensitivity were set to low to catch all fatal flaws. This means we need a new UT inspection at all plants whose baffle bolts were inspected. How does the NRC qualify UT devices to catch all fatal flaw and tinny flaws? How do we know the device is accurate.
• At least four
additional bolts that were not detected by the ultrasonic examination broke
while work was being done on the identified, degraded bolts. Sheehan said “the
ultrasonic testing is not considered to be 100% foolproof.” But its rate of
inaccuracy is not known and there is no way to tell what other bolts or
critical internal structures may be poised to break inside the reactor.
Ultimately, Entergy found it necessary to replace an additional 50 baffle
bolts, bringing the total to 277, meaning one in three critical bolts was
thought to be fatally degraded.
• Alarmed by
conditions in Indian Point 2, New Jersey’s energy utility, PSEG Co., conducted
an ultrasonic scan of its baffle bolts during an outage last month for their
Salem 1 reactor. Both Salem 1&2 had previously passed the visual
inspections via underwater camera and an ultrasonic scan was not scheduled
before 2019. But the scan showed 18 baffle bolts were degraded out of 832, or
2.1%. It was the first time degraded baffle bolts had been found in Salem 1,
though the percentage of worn-out bolts was in keeping with industry
projections for ageing systems. It added pressure on Entergy to show a
circumstance specific to Indian Point 2, and not a design flaw affecting both
plants.
I was the first person to associate the IP baffle issues with the North Anna water jetting issues.
• The issue of water
jetting, stemming from what had been regarded as an isolated incident in 2014,
has now been added to the potential problems facing Indian Point 2 which may
need to be addressed in the ongoing ageing management program. In the North Anna
nuclear reactor in Virginia, one of the baffles became slightly loose - though
the bolts proved to be sound - and the pressurized coolant shot through the gap
in an intense, cold water jet and damaged two 12-foot-long fuel rods. The water
jet forced the rods to spin, and the zirconium cladding burst, sending 15
radioactive uranium fuel pellets careening throughout the reactor (
http://bit.ly/1XTuCBR ). Actual core damage can be a precursor to a meltdown
since the loose fuel cannot be controlled and roaming metal parts can block the
cooling system for other fuel assemblies.
• Increasing attention
is being paid to a tube break in one of the Indian Point 2 steam generators
which occurred in February, 2000. The rupture sent radioactive coolant surging
into the normally “clean loop” that turns the electric generating turbine on
the non-nuclear side of the plant. The accident forced the first regional
nuclear “alert” and activation of the emergency operations center. The record
shows that in the confusion, ConEd workers—then rated by the NRC as the worst
in the nation - improperly shut down the reactor by inserting too much cold
water in violation of rules designed to protect the reactor and critical
systems from thermal shock. The official report of the incident shows the
temperature differentials during the improper shutdown were not very large (
http://bit.ly/1WROTZD ) and it was thought there would be no long-term damage.
But it marked a clear deviation and threat to the integrity of the baffle
bolts. There are indications Entergy researchers have sought evidence that the
thermal shock was greater than initially reported. If so, Indian Point 2 had
the radioactive equivalent of an incipient cancer at the time it was sold to
Entergy in 2000, and it may or may not be curable.
• Pressure is mounting
on the NRC to take over the investigation. The environmental group Friends of
the Earth filed an emergency petition with the agency asking the Commissioners
order an investigation by an agency Augmented Inspection Team which takes over
investigations when the danger of a meltdown increases by a factor of 10.
Further, the Commissioners are asked to issue a Confirmatory Action Letter
prohibiting the plant from reopening until a root cause analysis shows it is
safe to do so, and shutting Indian Point 3 for an intensive examination. Such
letters are issued if the risk of a meltdown is increased by a factor of 100.
“This plant was built
in an age when people worshipped nuclear power,” said David Freeman, former
president of the New York Power Authority which built and operated Indian Point
3 until it was sold to Entergy in 2001. As head of the NYPA Freeman ordered
Indian Point 3 shut for two years in the 1990s because of lax standards and
frequent mishaps.
“ConEd even proposed building
a nuclear reactor in downtown New York,” he added after the Friends of the
Earth press conference. “They never dreamed it, in itself, is as dangerous as a
bomb. But you can have a radioactive fire the likes of which you’ve never
imagined.
“We’re asking the NRC to do their job and thoroughly examine
every aspect of those plants. Even if Entergy replaces all of the bolts at
Indian Point 2, what is the basis for not thinking that something else is way
out of whack? You just can’t take risks, and it defies common sense not to shut
down Unit 3 and examine it.”
Controlling
Nuclear Power
At the core of the dispute is the ability of Entergy to
accurately monitor critical systems it cannot directly see or easily access in
one of the world’s most forbidding industrial environments.
Normal air pressure is about 14 pounds per square inch (psi). The pressure in a
typical home water tank is about 35 psi, which is more than enough to fight
gravity and send water from the bottom to the top of the home. The water does
not reach a boiling point, and one could conceivably stir the water by hand, if
desired.
The heart of a nuclear reactor is the 12-foot-long fuel rod,
consisting of about 360 uranium pellets encased in a zirconium sleeve. At the
North Anna plant, a pressurized water reactor like Indian Point, some 264 fuel
rods are grouped into “assemblies”, each containing boron control rods to slow
down or speed up the fission process. There are 157 of these assemblies
strategically placed inside the huge reactor core, according to Dominion Power
Co. spokesman Richard Zuercher.
If the fission process is uncontrolled, the uranium pellets will
heat up to the point where it becomes a molten slag and melts through the steel
reactor. So control of the temperature around the assemblies, and the flow
through the assemblies is critical to safely operating the system that is,
essentially a controlled chemical fire.
The operating temperature of a reactor is about 700 degrees
Fahrenheit, and the pressure is maintained at about 2,250 psi in order to keep
the 300,000 gallons of superheated water in a liquid state. It is not a jumbo
home water heater, and at that enormous pressure the water in the reactor core
most resembles superheated, roiling concrete.
It is critical that there be a constant flow of water to avoid
buildups of hot pockets around individual fuel rods. That is the function of
the baffle former bolts, which hold a series of 13-foot baffles that line the
core of the reactor and surround the fuel assemblies. A series of pumps,
operating at even higher pressures, force some 300,000 gallons per minute of
cooler water to flow down between the baffles and the wall of the reactor and
come up through a series of openings and flow through the fuel assemblies to
keep them in the optimal operating temperature.
The roiling, highly radioactive reactor water is pumped out of
the reactor and into the steam generator, a massive heat exchanger featuring
3,260 U-shaped, thin steel tubes (http://bit.ly/RSxaiw ), and then flows back
to the reactor. To avoid thermal stress, the NRC operating regulations dictate
that the temperature difference between the “hot leg” coming out of the reactor
and the “cool leg” returning to the reactor can’t exceed 72 degrees F. And when
cooling down the reactor, the temperature can’t drop more than 100 degrees per
hour.
The reactor water provides the first part of a 3-step process of
generating electricity. The second step involves a “clean loop” of water which
is forced over the steam generator tubes containing the superhot reactor water,
and quickly turns to steam. This blows out to an adjacent building and through
fans turning the massive, 40-ton turbine which generates electricity. The steam
then passes through a reverse heat exchanger featuring cool water from the
Hudson River. The steam condenses into hot water and is routed back to the
steam generator to be reheated and repeat the process. The hot river water is
dumped back into the Hudson, a process that kills more than a billion fish
annually.
It is a system that is intricately designed, infinitely
interwoven, and extremely efficient. There are sensors to monitor temperature
changes in each fuel bundle; X-ray sensors to detect wear and tear on steam tubes;
a Metal Impact Monitoring System to detect loose metal parts which can damage
fuel rods or block a coolant stream from properly circulating; and a Reactor
Coolant System Activity monitor to detect cracks in fuel rods.
In 2000 this efficient system went horribly wrong.
The Nuclear
Emergency
ConEd saved money by ignoring repairs. By Feb. 15,2000, there
were more than 15,000 items on its “corrective action list” of major or minor
items which had broken or malfunctioned and needed repair or replacement. The
NRC”s Augmented Inspection Ream report ( http://bit.ly/1WROTZD ) of April 28,
2000 notes: “the number and duration of the equipment problems reflected
weaknesses in engineering, corrective action processes, and operational support
at the Station. The Licensee’s response to a number of equipment problems
identified during the event reflected an acceptance of ‘working around’ rather
than fixing the problem.”
Indeed, workers in one area had to walk around holding a broom
in front of them to detect thin jets of steam leaking from high pressure pipes
that were hard to see but could cut through a person like a laser. If the broom
suddenly shredded the workers knew where a leak was.
