Monday, March 13, 2017

Junk Outage Maintenance At Susquehanna: Two Oil Leaks Upon First Startup

It sounds like a coverup as they didn't save the leaking gasket...

Susquehanna Steam Electric Station 05000-387
Unit 1

EVENT DESCRIPTION

On April 22, 2016 at approximately 11:25, Unit 1 entered Mode 1.

On April 22, 2016 at approximately 12:09, Technical Specification (TS) 3.5.3 was entered and the RCIC [EllS System Identifier: BN] Quarterly Flow Surveillance was performed with reactor pressure vessel (RPV) pressure at approximately 930 psig.

On April 22, 2016 at approximately 14:00, a two to three drops per second leak on the 1 F212B, RCIC Turbine Lube Oil Filter [EllS Component Identifier: FL T], was identified.

On April 22, 2016 at approximately 16:01, the main turbine [EllS System Identifier: TA] was tripped due to a seal oil leak on the collector end of the generator [EllS System Identifier: TB].

On April 22, 2016 at approximately 20:57, the reactor entered Mode 2.

On April 23, 2016 at approximately 00:46, the reactor entered Mode 3. RPV Pressure was below 150 psig at approximately 03:00.

On April 23, 2016 at approximately 03:55, an operability review concluded that RCIC was inoperable since there was no guarantee that RCIC would meet its mission time with the identified leak. 
On April 23, 2016 at approximately 06:54, the reactor entered Mode 4.

On April 30, 2016, both filter elements and all gaskets were replaced. These actions corrected the leak and RCIC was subsequently declared operable.

The leakage identified on April 22, 2016 was considered sufficient to require declaring RCIC inoperable.

RCIC was also considered to have been inoperable prior to the transition to Mode 1. As a result, the condition was considered a violation of Technical Specification (TS) 3.0.4 and reportable in accordance with 10 CFR 50.73(a)(2)(i)(B) as a condition prohibited by Technical Specifications.

CAUSE OF EVENT

The two items replaced to correct the leak were the gaskets and the filters. The filters would not cause an oil leak in the system and no deficiencies within the filters were identified. The gaskets were disposed of prior to the evaluation, and were the only difference that could have potentially resulted in the oil leak. Based on this available information, the direct cause of the leak was determined to be an unidentified gasket issue. A manufacturing defect or poor seating caused by pressurization are two of the potential gasket issues that could have caused the leak; however, a definitive apparent cause could not be determined.

Junk Plant River Bend: Never Exceeded 20% Since Outage, then Scram

March 15

River Bend is at 80% again.

March 14

You gotta give it too them, they didn't give up. Restarted and up to their sweet spot of 19%.


***This guy started up from a extended outage sometime on March 8. Simmered along at 20% with turbine control issues. One wonders what work they did with the turbine control in the outage.

Least nobody sneezed in the control room at Grand Gulf causing a long and big down power or trip.

Arkansas Unit 2 has been a 50% for how long...

Profound capacity factor and economics problems across the whole southern Entergy fleet...   

Power ReactorEvent Number: 52602
Facility: RIVER BEND
Region: 4 State: LA
Unit: [1] [ ] [ ]
RX Type: [1] GE-6
NRC Notified By: JACK MCCOY
HQ OPS Officer: DONG HWA PARK
Notification Date: 03/10/2017
Notification Time: 11:41 [ET]
Event Date: 03/10/2017
Event Time: 07:14 [CST]
Last Update Date: 03/10/2017
Emergency Class: NON EMERGENCY
10 CFR Section:
50.72(b)(2)(iv)(B) - RPS ACTUATION - CRITICAL
Person (Organization):
JESSE ROLLINS (R4DO)

UnitSCRAM CodeRX CRITInitial PWRInitial RX ModeCurrent PWRCurrent RX Mode
1M/RY17Power Operation0Hot Shutdown
Event Text
MANUAL REACTOR SCRAM DUE TO CLOSURE OF THE MAIN TURBINE CONTROL VALVES

"At 0714 CST on March 10, 2017, with the unit in Mode 1 at approximately 17% power, a manual actuation of the reactor protection system (RPS) was initiated due to rising reactor pressure caused by the closure of the Main Turbine Control Valves (MTCV's). The cause of the closure of the MTCV's is under investigation.

"The unit is currently stable in Mode 3.

"All control rods inserted as expected; water level control is stable in the normal control band and reactor pressure is being maintained with steam line drains [aligned to the main condenser].

"The NRC Senior Resident Inspector has been notified."

Thursday, March 09, 2017

Entergy (Waterford) Having Troubles Knowing What Position Their Valves Are In

It is a indication of dysfunction with the control room employees.
Power ReactorEvent Number: 52600
Facility: WATERFORD
Region: 4 State: LA
Unit: [3] [ ] [ ]
RX Type: [3] CE
NRC Notified By: SCOTT MEIKLEJOHN
HQ OPS Officer: JEFF ROTTON
Notification Date: 03/08/2017
Notification Time: 20:13 [ET]
Event Date: 03/08/2017
Event Time: 16:27 [CST]
Last Update Date: 03/08/2017
Emergency Class: NON EMERGENCY
10 CFR Section:
50.72(b)(3)(v)(D) - ACCIDENT MITIGATION
Person (Organization):
JESSE ROLLINS (R4DO)

UnitSCRAM CodeRX CRITInitial PWRInitial RX ModeCurrent PWRCurrent RX Mode
3NY100Power Operation100Power Operation
Event Text
BOTH TRAINS OF LOW PRESSURE SAFETY INJECTION INOPERABLE DUE TO MAINTENANCE ERROR

"This is a non-emergency notification from Waterford 3.

"On March 8, 2017 at 1627 [CST] Technical Specification (TS) 3.5.2 action 'c' was entered due to both trains of Low Pressure Safety Injection (LPSI) being inoperable. This TS action requires one train of LPSI be restored within 1 hour or be in at least Hot Standby within the next 6 hours.

"It was identified that LPSI train B was inoperable due to SI-135B, Reactor Coolant Loop 1 Shutdown Cooling Warmup Valve, being found open. At the time of discovery, LPSI train A was inoperable for pre planned maintenance, but available and awaiting operability retest. The station was in compliance with TS 3.5.2 action 'a'. Maintenance workers were scheduled to work Sl-135A Reactor Coolant Loop 2 Shutdown Cooling Warmup Valve, and inadvertently began work on Sl-135B and manually opened the valve which resulted in the LPSI Train B being inoperable.

"Once identified by Operations Control Room staff, the valve [SI-135B] was placed in the closed position and stroke tested to ensure operability. TS 3.5.2 action 'c' was exited at time 1705. The station remained in compliance with TS 3.5.2 action 'a'. "

The licensee notified the NRC Resident Inspector.

Wednesday, March 08, 2017

Our Electric System "Administrative State": Burn Them All to Hell

Don't trust anyone over thirty years old !!!

These are the guys who built our system. These guys are so selfish. I'd fire everyone here. Start over with the professionals under 30 years old. Or wait till the old farts die off on their own.

What, three FERC commissioners, two missing. Same with the NRC.

You can see our severely dysfunction of out political system in the reliability of the junk nuclear plants.

The independent power producers model is obsolete. 

The butterfly effect...one flap of a butterfly's wing a half a world away can collapse our whole system. A non linear response!!!

Boo MotherFucker!!!  

'Can't be half-pregnant': Power market upheavals prompt states, feds to take actionare

As FERC prepares for a technical conference nuclear supports and gas plants coming under pressure in ERCOT and CAISO

Utility Drive
Author
Published
March 8, 2017
Strange things are afoot in organized power markets. 
You can see it in New York, where existing, carbon-free nuclear generation needs help from the state to keep running. In Ohio, where generators are selling coal plants after failing to win financial support. And in Texas, the nation's largest organized market, where even combined-cycle gas plants have come under pressure.
Last week, Mauricio Gutierrez, the president and CEO of NRG, called the independent power producer model "obsolete and unable to create value over the long term." His company owns a dozen coal, gas and nuclear plants in Texas, and generation revenues for that region dropped more than $90 million last year, primarily because of lower power prices in the state.How will the power industry evolve in 2017? Get Utility Dive's free eBook to find out.
"There does seem to be an acute problem across the markets where your supposed market outcome is driving high fixed-cost baseload resources off the system," said Raymond Gifford, a partner with Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP and a former Colorado utility regulator. "Attempts to create capacity markets have proven insufficient."
Gifford and WBK partner Matthew Larson have co-authored a pair of white papers looking at what states have been doing to preserve baseload resources, as well as the tension that exists between markets and public policies like renewable energy incentives and nuclear power subsidies.
"Zero-emission credits," passed in in New York and Illinois to preserve nuclear plants, appear to be the direction states are moving in, the pair concluded. 
"States are coalescing around an ‘around market’ template to preserve nuclear baseload power plants," they wrote in last month's report. "Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and others are looking to this template for an ‘around market’ solution of their own, and these states are the next frontier of the ZEC strain of ‘around market’ solutions."
So far, most of the focus has been on struggling nuclear generation. Coal plants faced with challenging market conditions have often shuttered, or been sold to a buyer with more appetite for risk. But now it appears gas plants could be at risk as well, evidenced by the La Paloma gas plant filing for bankruptcy in California late last year.
"You can't be half pregnant but that's what we've tried to be," said Larson. "We kind of like markets but if we don't like the outcome we're going to reverse it or start playing with prices. You can point to a number of policy imperatives — some of them defensible and others not — but ultimately this is an area where the political economy pressures … overwhelm the ability to run a market."
"The fundamental reality," said Gifford, "seems to be you're not able to cover your fixed costs in a market that is essentially dispatching with some equilibrium between intermittent renewables, driving down prices during large parts of the day, and simple-cycle gas, which has less fixed costs to cover [than large baseload plants]."
Troubles in Texas, California, PJM markets
Each wholesale electricity market carries its own set of resources, priorities, challenges and incentives, but across several regions similar problems are cropping up. 
PJM, in the Mid-Atlantic, operates both energy and capacity markets. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), on the other hand, operates only an energy market, but stresses are beginning to show in each.
Last month, Bloomberg View noted how cheap Texas wind has been hurting independent power producers with gas-fired facilities in the state. While Texas energy demand has continued to climb, the state now gets more energy from wind farms than nuclear plants. And as fuel-free wind is dispatched first, it has driven down energy prices, cutting revenues for IPPs.
"Each market is a little different, but you can draw conclusions if you have all these markets exhibiting some of the same problems — and the states for, political economy reasons if nothing else, are copying some of the same answers," said Gifford.
“ERCOT is the purest expression of the market model," he said. It would be a "seismic" shift, he added, if independent producers are struggling there.
Public policies, while they may be necessary to increase or protect favored resources, are having undeniable impacts on the markets, Gifford and Larson said. In states like Texas, cheap renewables are often dispatched first in the generation stack. Due to declining costs and the federal production tax credit, wind resources in particular can bid in at low or negative prices, lowering the market clearing rate for all plants in the stack. 
Until recently, the dynamic put large baseload plants at most risk due to their high fixed costs. But as renewables continue to proliferate and decline in price, even natural gas generators are starting to feel pressure in markets rich with wind and solar, like Texas and California. 
This month, Calpine informed the California ISO last year that four gas peakers coming off long-term contracts were no longer economical and would be shut down by 2018. Two of them, Yuba City and Feather River, were found to be needed for reliability.
Emergency peaker plants identified as uneconomic by Calpine.
Credit: Source: California ISO

"When you get down to it, we have such a competing set of public policies imperatives ...  that price formation is distorted eight ways to Sunday," said Gifford. "We're using Rube Goldberg attempts to preserve what's a pretty rickety structure in the first place."
Capacity markets, where they exist, are not working, Gifford said. The power industry's high fixed costs and relatively low marginal costs are making it difficult for some generators to compete. But without a way to reliably recover fixed costs, one of two things happen, said Gifford: "Either all go bankrupt, or the capital formation never happens in the first place."
"Capacity markets in PJM have generally been judged not sufficient to keep capacity in the market," he said, noting that its capacity market is generally considered the most robust.
Stu Bresler, senior vice president of operations and markets for PJM, took some issue with Gifford's assessment, but also acknowledged that markets are evolving in the narrative laid out by the WBK white papers. 
"Markets are successfully achieving what they have been designed to accomplish: ensuring reliability at the lowest reasonable cost," Bresler said in a statement. "PJM’s markets are producing prices that efficiently and reliably drive the entry of efficient, new resources and the exit of older, uneconomic resources."
But he added that, as the white papers noted, "demands on markets are changing as public policy makers begin to emphasize factors other than cost. PJM is committed to examining how to harmonize markets and public policy and will investigate ways to use market-based incentives that align with desired resource attributes."
The FERC problem
In January, the Electric Power Supply Association made two filings asking federal regulators to take action on nuclear subsidies passed in New York, calling them a clear overreach and requesting the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to take mitigating actions.
In recent years, similar challenges to state generation supports have been knocked down by federal authorities. Last year, FERC blocked power purchase agreements approved by Ohio regulators that aimed to support aging coal and nuclear plants owned by FirstEnergy and AEP Ohio. Before that, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hughes v. Talen Energy Marketing against a state incentive in Maryland that federal regulators said would impact wholesale price formation.
Now, FirstEnergy Corp. is pushing for legislation in Ohio that, similar to New York's method, would use "zero-emission tax credits" to support the Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants in Ohio.
Backers of the zero-emission credits say they differ in structure from the generation programs struck down last year, as they simply reward nuclear resources for their carbon-free generation. The credits under the ZEC program, they say, are little different than renewable energy credits widely accepted as a part of state RPS programs. 
FERC, with authority over power markets, will ultimately have to take up the issue. Last week, the commission issued notice of a technical conference to take place May 1 and 2, "to discuss certain matters affecting wholesale energy and capacity markets operated by the Eastern Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) and Independent System Operators (ISOs)."
But right now, FERC has just two members — Acting Chairman Cheryl LaFleur and Commissioner Collette Honorable — and both are Democrats. Without a quorum of three, the commission cannot take any major actions. And from a policy standpoint, things may be at a standstill until President Trump can nominate more than one Republican.
Kenneth Irvin, co-leader of Sidley Austin LLP's global energy practice, said back in January he was "afraid stuff is going to grind to a halt."
Many in the industry share that view, particularly given potentially lengthy vetting processes for FERC nominees. FERC and power markets are "incredibly esoteric," Gifford pointed out, and will likely not be the subject of the first major energy actions of the administration. An executive order to review and repeal the Clean Power Plan, for instance, is expected before any movement on FERC. 
"Not withstanding the Clean Power Plan going away, in whatever form that takes, this issue has way bigger reach than any in my opinion," said Larson. "And it continues to fly under the radar."
Along with FERC nominees from the White House, a court hearing in the South District Court of New York on the state's ZEC program is coming up at the end of this month. While an appeal is expected no matter how the court rules, the legal interpretation in the case will likely set the stage for litigation in other states and any eventual action from FERC. 
"This is a very big fork in the road here for FERC, and which way they go determines how this plays out," Gifford added. "And that's what we're really waiting for." 

Junk Arkansas Nuclear 2 Cat 4 plant At Half Power For A Week

The trembling under out feet. What implications does this have for the grid and nukes?
"Shale Billionaire Hamm Says Industry Binge Can ‘Kill’ Oil Market"

Will they become another FirstEnergy? Declare bankruptcy and dump their nuclear plants. Contracts all broke. Effectively they are bankrupt now.

I'll bet you there will be a massive stampede out utility bonds and stocks when the first walking dead declares bankruptcy.

A Black Swan level event...  

It is a cat 4 plant like Pilgrim...

I'll bet you if any plant was undergoing the intense NRC intervention as Pilgrim they would have a 80% average capacity. They can't have in the high 90% capacity factor without breaking rules... 

Why is the southern Entergy fleet more capacity factor impaired than the northern boys. There has got to be a two tier system here somewhere?

You get it, its a regulated plant. The politicians will make the rate payer pick up the tab. I guarantee the advantage of a regulated plant is coming to a end.

Tuesday, March 07, 2017

Junk Plants Hope Creek, Salems and Beaver Valleys (5 plants) On The Chopping Block

Did the recent downgrade of Hope Creek come from the financial pressures.
Junk Plants Hope Creek, Salems and Beaver Valleys on the Chopping Block


March 7, 2017

Tom Johnson
Posted with permission from NJ Spotlight

CEO tells energy analysts 'We are not saber rattling. We are not bluffing'

Public Service Enterprise Group is continuing to make the case that it needs help to keep its fleet of nuclear power plants afloat, this time to a roomful of energy analysts.

Chief executive Ralph Izzo said yesterday that if the plants are not economically feasible to operate, the company will not continue to keep the units in service, a prospect that could occur within three years. Nuclear provides nearly half the electricity used by customers in New Jersey.
"We are not saber rattling. We are not bluffing. We are not trying to be alarmists,'' said Ralph Izzo, who also serves as chairman and president of PSEG, telling analysts at the company's annual investors' conference at the New York Stock Exchange. "We will not operate those plants long term if they are not earning their cost of capital.''
The nuclear sector has been rocked by early plant closings across the nation, battered by low-price natural gas, which has made it difficult for the nuclear units to compete. Some states, including Illinois and New York, have approved generous subsidies to keep nuclear plants afloat, an option being pursued by PSEG with legislators, regulators, and policymakers at the state and federal levels.
PSEG Power, a subsidiary, operates three nuclear units at its Artificial Island complex in South Jersey and also owns part of Peach Bottom in Pennsylvania. For months, the company has been talking with officials about economic conditions.
Currently, PSEG Power invests $100 million in new capital each year at its nuclear plants. Even with hedges in place to reduce financial risk, the plants are not earning their cost of capital, according to PSEG. As those hedges roll off, the plants could go cash-flow negative, Izzo said.
While the company is talking with state and federal officials about the problem, as well as with PJM Interconnection, the grid operator, officials indicated a solution at the state level is most likely…

Nuke Executives Massively Increase(28%) Threatening Employees as They Face Historic Crisis

The NRC uses a too high standard to identify and prosecute employee intimidation. I'll bet you it is really fifty times more prevalent. The NRC needs unobtainable perfect evidence to investigate and prosecute corporate and management intimidation.


able 1 Cases Opened by Category

Category FY 2012 FY 2013 FY 2014 FY 2015 FY 2016 Total 176 149 135 138 119 Material False Statements 18 20 35 33 24 Violations of Other NRC Regulatory Requirements 73 52 38 43 29 Discrimination 48 50 33 36 46 Assists to Staff 37 27 29 26 20
  
Increase in NRC OI Discrimination Investigations in FY 2016 Coupled with Increased Investigation Demands

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

The recently published US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Office of Investigations (OI) Annual Report noted a 28% increase in the number of discrimination investigations in FY 2016 as compared to FY 2015. “Discrimination” in this context refers to retaliation for engaging in protected activities established in Section 211 of the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, as amended. OI conducts investigations at both reactor and materials sites, either at the request of specific NRC officials or on its own initiative. Of the 119 cases opened in FY 2016,

39% were discrimination investigations;

20% were investigations into suspected material false statements;

24% were investigations into potential violations of other NRC regulatory requirements; and

17% were assists to NRC staff.
Although there was a 14% decrease in the overall number of OI cases opened in 2016, discrimination investigations increased to 2012–2013 levels, despite declining or holding steady for the last couple years. This comes at a time when we have observed notable increases in the number of witnesses being interviewed and the number of documents requested as part of each investigation. We are consistently seeing a greater level of scrutiny regardless of the complexity of a given case or the nature of the issues involved. As a result, OI investigations have been more time-consuming and have created a greater burden for licensees, particularly materials licensees who have historically had less experience with these types of investigations. 
Of the 137 cases closed in FY 2016, OI substantiated willfulness on one or more of the allegations of wrongdoing in 41 investigations. Several investigations resulted in the NRC issuing Notices of Violation (NOVs) or Confirmatory Orders to individuals or licensees. In at least three cases, the NRC issued the licensee a civil penalty.  
Notably, after one of the cases was referred to the US Department of Justice for prosecutorial consideration, a former Quality Control inspector pled guilty to deliberately falsifying visual weld inspection reports on a nuclear project in federal district court, and was sentenced to 36 months of probation and to pay $29,385 in restitution.

Junk Plant Grand Gulf: How to Make the NRC Nervous

Sometime yesterday Grand Gulf came up from 75% to 91% power as reported on the NRC site this morning. These guys have a notorious capacity factor and the staff is becoming increasingly erratic. Seems they are too incompetent to maintain a decent capacity factor and make money. It's a death spiral...

So late yesterday afternoon (eastern time), I tried to make a call to my buddy senior resident inspector. The Grand Gulf inspector's phone wasn't answered. I had to leave a recording. Better yet. The unanswered phone indicated the inspectors were busy with this very troubled licensee's staff and plant. It just verified the tipoff I received. They recently started up, then came down to 75% for a week or more. I wanted to know what equipment broke down as the excuse to call with my question.  

The basically theme of the recording, I summed up the plant's pathetic capacity factor in the last year and reminded him of the unscheduled recent three month shutdown based on the incompetent licensed operators. I ended the phone call with a "over emphasized", "I know you guys are busy".

I left no doubt I was operating under insider information...

You just have to rip apart the dysfunctional "administrative state" and replace it with a functional one.  

Bannon: Trump administration is in unending battle for ‘deconstruction of the administrative state’

Junk Plant Grand Gulf: 2016 Capacity Factor Troubles Continues Upon Start-up

Feb 10

100% river bend seems to have a slow start post outage.


Feb 9

Beyond absolute disgrace, back down to 76%.

Feb 8 update

absolute disgrace, still at 91% power

Reposted from 2/24

March 7


Grand Gulf has gone up to 91% last night or yesterday afternoon. Congratulation. Will it take a week to come up to 100% power?

Feb 27

Certainly looks like "a big extended down power event" with 74% power.  

Update Feb 24 (reposted from 2/7/17)


Their operational and maintenance issues is still dogging this plant. I see the plant is at 76% power today. You can't make any money at this level. What a disgusting capacity factor record. This indicates the plant is unsafe. It's exactly as I predicted on Feb 8 upon startup from a extended shutdown based on the operators' were incompetent. This is still a very troubled nuclear plant.
(Feb 8)"I predict within a month these guys will have a scram based on equipment problems and/or a big extended down power event."   
Feb 9
They didn't even get up 100% power for one day, now they power down yesterday from 96% power to 91%.

Feb 8

They are up to some 96% today. Seven days to get up to 96% is ridiculous and indicates still a profound weakness in the plant's staff.

I predict within a month these guys will have a scram based on equipment problems and/or a big extended down power event.

The NRC says sometimes it takes four years to correct for a big decline in plant performance.

Update Feb 7
This got to be the world record power assentation program. Now they are struck at 58% for two days. A week to just get up to 58% power? Can't make money this way?
Reposted from Feb 2
***These guys have been shutdown for three months based upon the licensed operators were incompetent and not safe.
I called the Grand Gulf senior inspector two days before they started-up. I wanted him to know I had special insider information. He told me the licensed operators were extensively retrained and they spent a lot of money on fixing equipment. They had high industry experts coming in and out of the plant to try to get a handle of their problems. 
They started sometime on Jan 30th.

1)     At midnight on Jan 30th they were at 9% power.

2)     Next night 20%

3)     Last night struck at 19%

With three months planning for this day, they should have been up at power much sooner. This has been a very troublesome start-up much like the capacity factor issues of the 2016. A good plant should take up to 24 hours to get up to way in excess of 90% power.

Junk Plant Entergy's Cooper-Document Falsification ( looks like another Grand Gulf event)

Well its managed by Entergy through a contract. Will this become another Grand Gulf with a three month shutdown to retrain the licensed operators? Exact same event at Grand Gulf. Why is Entergy's fleet wide training so ethically challenged? I think the system of Entergy creates a high proportion of  ethically challenged Employees? Obviously Entergy has fleet wide issues with managing valve lineups. Why couldn't you put a computer chip on a valve, then bring your smart phone into the room and it detecting the position of every valve in seconds.  Hand checking valve position consumes so many invaluable ops man-hours at a critical time period just before startup. This is so 1950s mentality. As of a few weeks ago, the special inspection hasn't come out.    

Grand Gulf Nuclear Station stays closed as feds inspect (Oct 31, 2016)
Entergy shut the plant down on Sept. 8 to repair a water cooling pump. On Sept. 23 after work on the pump was completed, according to an NRC release, workers discovered that "misalignment of valves" had rendered a backup heat removal system unavailable. The plant is required to have that alternate system available when one of the plant's two heat removal systems is out of service.
"The following day, when preparing to restart the reactor, control room operators caused an unexpected increase in reactor vessel water level due to a misalignment of valves," the NRC release said.
It is felt this plant is one mistake away from permanent shutdown based on it being non competitive.

During a high intensify outage just prior to a start-up, the operators have to hand check manual and remote operated valves. For maintenance and testing, they have to manipulate many thousands of valves during the outage. Its too complicated to keep track of valve position from job to job and the error rate is too high. It eats up man power. So just prior to the startup, the ops trogs carry around the plant a valve line sheet paper with all the valves needing to check the valve positon. Your check the valve position and realign the valves to the require position. It really is a high skill job to do this right. It could be a system one sheet of paper with list of valves in one room or fifty sheets of paper on a clip board with valves all over the plant.

It's common practice throughout the industry, the trogs "radio" (the lingo and the phrase began in the Navy)these valve lineups. Its really falsification of paperwork. The majority of the list of valves are infrequently operated or almost never operated valves. So you just check off(mark down on paper) on valve list the correct valve position without actually visually looking or touching the valve. I radio'd many valve line-up sheets. Never got caught once for doing this. You can't be a dummy radioing valve line-up list. It's a high intelligence operation to do it right.

(the assumption here is everyone are not radioing)A new employee on shift is just given a valve list(easy one)and told to do the valve lineup. You have to understand the system to do this right. It usually takes the new guy hours complete the "valve lineup". He has to hunt for the location of the valves in a humongous plant. An experienced employees could do this very quickly because he knows location of that tiny instrumentation root valve from memory. You get a good reputation in the control room if you can do valve lineups quickly and not get into any issues. Its the sliding slope of corruption (look up frog boiling)...

The plant upon startup has a procedure...basically another check-off list. It dictates how you startup the plant in a approved and standard manner across all shifts. You have a check off that all valve lineups are complete in the plant startup procedure. If all valve lineups are not complete, then you can't startup the plant. The NRC doesn't enforce paperwork falsification because it is deemed as safety insignificant. 

(more about safety significance)     

Cooper today
Commission will inspect PPD's response to error at nuclear plant
The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission on March 13 will begin a special inspection of the Nebraska Public Power District’s response to an error at its nuclear plant that may have taken a heat-removal system out of operation for about four months.
NPPD on Feb. 5 found that two valves — which had been closed during a scheduled refueling outage on Oct. 7 — were not reopened once the Cooper Nuclear Station was brought back online. The plant is near Brownville in southeast Nebraska.
The heat-removal system was backed up by a second system, but the NRC will also look into whether both were inoperable for about 72 hours when the other system was offline for maintenance.
Such systems are “used to mitigate the effects of a variety of accidents,” the NRC said.
Drew Niehaus, a Cooper spokesman, said nothing went wrong as a result of the valves not being reopened and no equipment was damaged.
The finding prompted the “special inspection” by two NRC inspectors. Special inspections are the least aggressive of NRC examinations of problems at plants, with “augmented” inspections being more rigorous and “incident” inspections being the most aggressive.
“This special inspection will help us better understand the circumstances that led to the operator error,” said Kriss Kennedy, the NRC’s Region IV administrator.

Thursday, March 02, 2017

TVA and Sequoyah in Disarray  

TVA names new bosses for Sequoyah nuclear plant

March 1st, 2017

by
Dave Flessner in Breaking News

The Tennessee Valley Authority today announced organizational changes for its Sequoyah Nuclear Plant, naming Anthony L. "Tony" Williams as site vice president and Matt Rasmussen as plant manager.

Williams will join TVA on March 13 after working at Entergy Nuclear where he was general manager of plant operations for Palisades Nuclear Plant. He has worked in the power utility industry for 26 years at Entergy and Public Service Electric & Gas plants. Williams earned his MBA from Rutgers University and a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Lehigh University . He was a licensed senior reactor operator at both Salem Nuclear Generating Station and Indian Point Energy Center.


Wednesday, March 01, 2017

Junk Pilgrim Plant: Defective Component Engineering Musical Chairs

What going on for decades with these valves... is massive public fraud. The valves would perform poorly or leak…they would tell the NRC and public they are going to remove the valves and replace the defective design with a big redesigned valve. They would tinker with replacing the seat surface with some new material or change the dimension on some insignificant component. They would never fully test the new redesign. They never had any intention to change positively the characteristic of the valve. This says a lot about the NRC. Then they would put in the so called newly redesign valve, it would fail similarly or worse than the old design. It was just a scam to give the appearance they fixed the problems with the first defective design.

Prior to 2010 Pilgrim had notorious two stage safety relief valves (in the plant now. They decided to replace their two stage safety relief valves with even more defective three stage valves. Basically within a month of first installation, with the new three stage SRVs, one began to leak. I picked up on this early and made many complaints to the NRC. They had horrendous leakage and other performance problem leading to the 2015 blizzard where two valves failed. Seems there was so called test stand damage to all the valves. I conservatively think all four valves were inop since first installation. It would have been a much more severe violation if the NRC agreed with me. Damage to the internals is a much better indicator of valve failure than the miss-operation of the valve.

I believe the NRC allowed Pilgrim to operate post blizzard to the outage(a month or two) with  the three stage valves. Based on no ability to have confidence with the three stage, Pilgrim replace their three stage with two stage Safety relief valves in this outage after the 2015 blizzard.

I told the NRC, how can you dopes allow Pilgrim to operate with the two stage SRVs, when Pilgrim's opinion of the two stage was so poor in 2010 license amendment request (LAR)...to OK the three stage ending with a permanent shutdown decision shortly after the 2015 blizzard. Check out Pilgrim’s the bad mouthing of the two stage in 2010 (these valves are in the plant today).
Proposed License Amendment to Technical Specifications: Revised Technical Specification for Setpoint and Setpoint Tolerance Increases for Safety Relief Valves (SRV) and Spring Safety Valves (SSV), and Related Changes
March 15, 2010

The SRVs require replacement because the current two-stage Target Rock SRVs have been unreliable performers with respect to leaking while in-service and the subject of setpoint drift. SRV pilot valve leakage has led to multiple plant shutdowns and the setpoint drift problem resulted in exceeding current TS limits and numerous Licensee Event Reports (LERs). It has been determined that pilot valve leakage is due to low simmer margin and high as-found lift setpoints are due to corrosion bonding at the pilot valve disc/seat. To address current SRV performance problems, Entergy has performed extensive investigations and feasibility studies. The preferred option for correcting these problems is to replace all SRVs and SSVs during the next refueling outage. RFO-1 8 is currently planned to start on or about April 17, 2011.
This popped up in the last inspection report. I called Pilgrim’s inspectors…they told me they took it out because it was leaking. No one but the NRC and Pilgrim new it was leaking. There was no requirement for a complete explanation with ether the NRC or Pilgrim. You get it? A component(s) who failed effectively forcing the permanent shutdown of a nuclear plant, who fails again, there is no requirement to report on the new failure. The whole system is rigged.       
Remember this is the two stage and it’s in the current inspection report.
Replacement of safety relief valve ‘B’ on October 6, 2016
What I found hysterically funny from the dopey NRC, because of the leaky and poorly designed two stage, Pilgrim is going to reinstalled the three stage into the last operating period of the plant this spring's last outage. Do you think there are doing it because they got perfect proof the three stage SRVs are fixed?    

Monday, February 27, 2017

NRC's Herold Denton: A continual Example of our Loser News Media

This is how crazy the new media, bureaucracy and establishment are. It’s like giving a presidential medal of freedom to a arsonist who set the fire and then called it in. We got to see the world much deeper than how the news portrays our world!!!
Can you imagine the USA without a TMI. Denton understood the dysfunction as the chaos was developing in say 1977 and fixed the industry and NRC. People, that kind of person is a real hero
  • The Office's current Director is William Dean. It has deputy directorates for two areas: (1) Reactor Safety Programs and (2)Engineering and Corporate Support. It has program management, policy development and analysis staff as well as an array of divisions.                                                                                                                                                           The Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation is responsible for ensuring the public health and safety through licensing and inspection activities at commercial nuclear power plants. However, the actual evaluation of license renewal applications, known as LRA's, is conducted by the Division of License Renewal, a subordinated Division of the multifaceted NRR.

As director, he held a job that allowed him to see a extremely high granular view of the NRC and the nuclear industry. He was another failed bureaucrat who came to the request of another failed president. Carter is implicated, as he has special knowledge of the nuclear industry.

As director, he held a a job that allowed him to see a extremely high granular view of the NRC and the nuclear industry. He was another failed bureaucrat who came to the request of another failed president.

Harold Denton, Three Mile Island Hero, Dies at 80

POWER
Harold Denton, a career federal civil servant who helped prevent panic during the nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island March 28, 1979 and days after, died February 13 at his home in Knoxville, Tenn. He was 80. The cause of death was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease coupled with complications from Alzheimer’s disease.
Denton was an obscure bureaucrat at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, head of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, when Three Mile Island Unit 2, a quite new nuclear generating unit, suffered a small loss of coolant accident. It was deemed improbable and trivial at the time. It became the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, as neither the operators nor the regulators grasped what was happening at the time.
As the TMI economic catastrophe unfolded, Denton and the newly-created NRC watched the response of the utility, Metropolitan Edison, to the events at the plant not far from Pennsylvania’s capital in Harrisburg. The utility was dancing around the event, offering conflicting and unconvincing explanations about what had occurred, what they were doing to respond, and the severity of the accident. As it became clear later, they were uninformed, confused, and, at several points, just plain lying.
President Jimmy Carter, a nuclear engineer selected by the legendary nuclear pioneer Hyman Rickover to staff the nuclear Navy, decided to visit the reactor. The White House staff asked the NRC to send an expert to accompany Carter. Denton was the man of the hour.
As director, he held a a job that allowed him to see a extremely high granular TMI view of the NRC and the nuclear industry. He was another failed bureaucrat who came to the request of another failed president.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Junk Plant Pilgrim Getting Really To Take Down The NRC And The Whole Industry?


Junk Plant Pilgrim and Oyster Creek preventing entry into electric market? 

Faulty Valve Discovered During Pilgrim Power-Up

February 14, 2017

PLYMOUTH – Workers at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station have discovered another equipment problem at the plant, a week after a separate problemforced the station to curb its operations.

Officials found a leak in a feedwater valve after reconnecting to the grid early Sunday morning. That valve has since been taken offline and other lines will be used to provide hot water to the reactor before repairs can be made.

Pilgrim was preemptively disconnected from the grid before last Thursday’s blizzard. The station has been plagued by unplanned storm-related shutdowns in recent years, which have in part led to the station’s safety rating being downgraded by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2015.

Before the shutdown, Pilgrim was operating at reduced power after officials discovered a separate leak in a condenser tube connected to the system that is responsible for cooling the reactor. That program has since been repaired.

The station had reached 50 percent power as of Tuesday morning, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Pilgrim has not operated at full power since February 6.