American nuclear news

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Mike Ruppert in tonight's radio show said events are happening at greater rapidity and greater intensity. I can't disagree!

Possible Sabotage at Southern California Nuclear Plant

Yet more problems for San Onofre:  According to Southern California Edison,  a possible case of sabotage at the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant is being investigated.  Gundersen and Hurley discuss how coolant liquid at the plant may have found its way into an unrelated system and threatened the backup power supply. San Onofre has a long history of employee concerns, and recent layoffs may have exacerbated their employee problems.    The nation’s oldest running Nuclear Plant, Oyster Creek, may remain shut down for longer than expected following the discovery of a crack in the reactor head.   The NRC to back a new study which will re-evaluate earthquake risks and probabilities at U.S. nuclear plants. To hear interview GO HERE

US nuclear safety

Are Nuclear Plants Safe in Hurricanes? Incident During Sandy Suggests They May Not Be

We know the bad news about superstorm Sandy: the Jersey shore was devastated and many towns remain waterlogged. New York suffered a direct hit, with the city's mass transit system flooded and part-paralyzed for days to come.

Richard Schiffman

Huffington Post,

3 November, 2012

But there is good news, too, and that is all that it failed to do. Sandy did not kill hundreds -- as Hurricane Katrina did in New Orleans in 2005 -- thanks, in part, to timely evacuations and rescue efforts. And luckily, it did not trigger an even greater disaster at one of the region's nuclear power plants. But it could have.

Watchdog groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) warn that America's nuclear facilities remain vulnerable to a variety of potential catastrophic events, both natural and resulting from deliberate sabotage or cyber-attack. And they say that federal regulations are currently inadequate to deal with all of these possible disaster scenarios.

I reported on one such danger, solar flares, last May in the New York Daily News. A 2011 study by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory warns that a massive solar storm could knock out electricity in some areas for weeks, overwhelming the capacity of many nuclear plants to keep their critical cooling systems operational.

But nuclear regulators have not required power plants to guard against the risk of solar storms. David Lochbaum, the director of UCS's nuclear safety project told me in an email interview that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses plants "using the rearview mirror." It looks to the past, in other words, to assess future risks.

But, he says, past events are not always a good measure for the worst that can happen. Lochbaum cites Fukushima. The Daichi plant was located behind a seawall that was high enough to protect against the kind of flooding that Japan had seen previously. But nobody had considered the possibility that a monster tsunami could breach the wall.

All 13 of the plant's back-up generators broke down an hour after the earthquake when they were swamped by the tsunami. As a result, that critical cooling system failed.

"Is it prudent public policy to operate facilities of such immense hazard on such tenuous assumptions?" Lochbaum asks. He says that Hurricane Sandy provides further proof that we need to come up with solutions "sooner rather than later" to fix America's inadequate regulatory system.

Lochbaum points out in a blog that the risks of nuclear power generation are magnified by the fact that the plants are always located near a river, lake or ocean. That is because producing nuclear power creates a lot of heat, which needs to be dissipated by huge volumes of water. These cooling systems are all that prevents the plutonium in reactor cores from going critical and melting down, much like what happened at Fukushima.

But locating nuclear plants near bodies of water has its risks, which range from the clogging of intake pipes by barnacles and mussels -- as happened at the Pilgrim nuclear plant near Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1981 -- to potential damage from storm surges, such as those created by Hurricane Sandy.

One facility was put in a state of "high alert" during Sandy due to high-water levels in its water intake structure. The Oyster Creek Generating Station on Barnegat Bay -- 40 miles north of Atlantic City, and the oldest nuclear facility in the nation -- was shut down last week for refueling. Plutonium, however, can dangerously overheat whether or not a plant is actively producing electricity. So, 300 employees stayed at Oyster Creek, Monday night, to ensure that the imperiled cooling system continued to function.

Nuclear plants located near oceans are not the only ones threatened by flooding. Thirty-four reactors, fully a third of those in the U.S.9i, are sited along rivers with dams upstream. A report released last March by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission suggests that many of these plants were not designed to withstand the massive floods that catastrophic dam collapse would unleash. The Huffington Post reported earlier this month that:

"According to the NRC's own calculations ... the odds of the dam near the Oconee plant [operated by Duke Energy in South Carolina] failing at some point over the next 22 years are far higher than were the odds of an earthquake-induced tsunami causing a meltdown at the Fukushima plant."

This alarming news, however, was blacked out of the NRC's public report. It was leaked by the lead author, Richard H Perkins, who said that his work had been censored because it revealed that:

"The NRC has been in possession of relevant, notable, and derogatory safety information for an extended period but failed to properly act on it."

In another section of the report, about the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant in Nebraska, NRC redactors removed information indicating that the failure of the Oahe or Fort Randall dams could result in levels of rampaging water higher than the plant's flood protection walls. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission evidently believes that it is better to hide the facts about nuclear risks than to fix the problem.

Critics allege that not only does the NRC withhold critical information, but also fails in many cases to enforce regulations that are already on the books. David Lochbaum warns:

"I'm most concerned about the NRC's practice of allowing unsafe reactors to operate. UCS's Nuclear Power Information Tracker shows 47 reactors that NRC knows to violate fire protection regulations and 27 reactors with seismic protection known to be less than the seismic hazards they face. These pre-existing vulnerabilities mean that the American public is protected more by luck than by skill."

And if superstorm Sandy, and the increasing frequency of other extreme weather events in recent years is any evidence, America's luck may be running out.

Update on Oyster Creek, NY

Fuel Pool Crisis Narrowly Averted at Oyster Creek Nuclear Plant

WashingtonsBlog,

30 October, 2012

Problems at 4 Other Nuclear Plants … Apparently None Were Severe

We reported last Friday that Hurricane Sandy could cause problems at Oyster Creek, Salem, Indian Point, Limerick and other nuclear plants in the Northeast.

We noted yesterday that Oyster Point was most vulnerable to the storm,  that it lacked diesel backup generators for its fuel pool pumps, and that storm-related problems could present challenges in cooling the fuel in it its fuel pools.

 

Reuters reports today that that challenge has just become real:

Exelon Corp’s 43-year-old Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey remains on “alert” status, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said early Tuesday.

***

Exelon however was concerned that if the water rose over 7 feet it could submerge the service water pump motor that is used to cool the water in the spent fuel pool, potentially forcing it to use emergency water supplies from the in-house fire suppression system to keep the rods from overheating.

***

The water levels reached a peak of 7.4 feet

– apparently above the threshold — but the pump motors did not flood, Sheehan said. As of 11 a.m. EDT Tuesday the water level was down to 5.8 feet, with the next high tide at 11:45 a.m.

“They need the water level to stay below 6 feet for a while to exit the alert,” Sheehan said, noting when the water level falls below 4.5 feet, the plant could exit the unusual event.

***

The relatively small 636-megawatt (MW) Oyster Creek plant earlier experienced a “power disruption” at its switch yard, causing two backup diesel generators to kick in and maintain a stable source of power, Exelon said.

The NRC spokesman said the company could use water from a fire suppression system or a portable pump to cool the pool if necessary. The used uranium rods in the pool could cause the water to boil in about 25 hours without additional coolant; in an extreme scenario the rods could overheat, risking the eventual release of radiation.

The concerns over the status of the spent fuel pool at Oyster Creek was reminiscent of the fears that followed the Fukushima disaster last year, when helicopters and fire hoses were enlisted to ensure the pools remained filled with fresh, cool water.

In other words, we dodged a bullet.

There were also problems at the Salem, Indian Point, Limerick and Nine Mile Point nuclear plants. See this NRC report.

Update: Oyster Creek Nuclear Plant Exits Alert Status

Arnie Gundesen on Hurricane Sandy

Special Edition Podcast: After Hurricane Sandy - Questions and Answers About What Happened

In this special edition question & answer podcast, Gundersen and Hurley discuss what effects Hurricane Sandy had on U.S. nuclear power plants, especially Oyster Creek. Gundersen explains how spent fuel pools are not configured to be cooled with diesel power in the event of a loss of offsite power. Oyster Creek and several other nuclear power plants did lose offsite power and Thomson Reuters reports that they may use fire pumps to cool the pools.

For audio GO HERE


Reposting Arnie Gundersen's interview from yesterday

Nuclear Troubles from Hurricane Sandy

Update on NY nuclear power plants

Comments from Jenna Orkin:

Questions still remain on the the status of the area's nuclear power plants. Entergy reports that Indian Point, 50 miles north of midtown Manhattan, automatically closed at 10:41 last night not voluntarily but because of "power-grid issues" from the storm, "Nine Mile Point in Scriba, New York, was automatically shut down after a power disruption to a switchyard" and "the nation’s oldest nuclear plant, Exelon Corp. (EXC)’s Oyster Creek facility in New Jersey, is on alert.".

 Nuclear Plant in N.J. on Alert as Sandy Tests Industry

Hurricane Sandy forced three nuclear power plants to shut and put another on alert as federal regulators dispatched inspectors to monitor 11 facilities in the path of the storm, the biggest test for the U.S. industry since a crisis in Japan more than 18 months ago.

Bloomberg,

31 October, 2012

Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. (PEG) manually closed its 1,174-megawatt Salem Unit 1, about 18 miles south of Wilmington, Delaware, when four of six circulating pumps were no longer available because of weather, according to Joe Delmar, a company spokesman. The unit operated at full power yesterday, while unit 2 was shut for refueling.

“The biggest challenge for us overnight was waves hitting the circulating water systems at both stations,” Delmar said in an e-mail response to questions. There was also “lots of river grass and debris,” he said.

Sandy, the biggest Atlantic Ocean tropical storm on record, moved along the East Coast for five days before slamming into the mid-Atlantic coast yesterday, unlike the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 that crippled Japan’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant. Still, Sandy may disturb intake of water for cooling or sever plants’ links to external power.

Nine Mile Point in Scriba, New York, was automatically shut down after a power disruption to a switchyard, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. Entergy Corp.’s Indian Point 3 nuclear plant in New York also automatically closed at 10:41 p.m. yesterday because of power-grid issues from the storm, Neil Sheehan, an NRC spokesman based in King of Prussian, Pennsylvania, said today in an e-mail.

Oyster Creek

The nation’s oldest nuclear plant, Exelon Corp. (EXC)’s Oyster Creek facility in New Jersey, declared an alert last night due to elevated levels of water in its water-intake structure, according to a statement from the NRC. The plant, about 33 miles (53 kilometers) north of Atlantic City and near the center of the storm’s landfall, was already offline for a refueling outage.

“Nuclear plant operators throughout the region had their hands full dealing with this historic storm. While three reactors experienced shutdowns, all are in a safe condition,” Sheehan said in the e-mail. “Inspectors were on duty throughout the storm to keep a close watch on plant conditions and will continue to do so as work on restoring the units to service” begins.

Public Safety

Exelon said last night there was “no challenge to plant safety equipment and no threat to the public health or safety,” according to an e-mailed statement. “Exelon has staffed on-site and off-site emergency operations centers to monitor weather and plant conditions and to provide updated information to local, state and federal officials.”

Exelon said the alert was declared when water rose above 6 feet (1.8 meters) above sea level, the threshold for an alert -- the second-lowest of four levels of emergency declaration. A disruption was also reported at the plant’s switchyard, which delivers power to the plant, though diesel generators kicked in automatically.

Oyster Creek began operating in December 1969 as the nation’s first large-scale commercial nuclear power plant. The company announced in 2010 plans to close it by the end of 2019, when it will have been in operation 50 years. Its single boiling-water reactor produces 645 net megawatts, enough electricity to power 600,000 homes.

‘Breadth, Intensity’

On its website, the Chicago-based company called Oyster Creek “a robust and fortified facility, capable of withstanding the most severe weather.” Earlier yesterday, Exelon said it repositioned emergency gear, activated back-up communications and boosted staffing at its three Pennsylvania plants in the path of the storm: Limerick, Peach Bottom and Three Mile Island.

Entergy Corp. (ETR)’s Indian Point 3 nuclear plant in New York automatically shut down at 10:41 p.m. yesterday because of power grid issues from the storm, Sheehan said today in an e-mail.

Constellation Energy Group Inc.’s Nine Mile Point 1 reactor in the state was also shut because of a problem putting power onto the grid, Reuters reported, citing an unidentified NRC spokesman. It wasn’t clear if the outage was related to Sandy, Reuters said, citing the NRC. Nobody answered calls to the press offices of Constellation or the NRC.

NRC Inspectors

The Washington-based NRC sent inspectors armed with satellite phones to facilities from Maryland to Connecticut and said all plants remain in a safe condition. Procedures require plants to shut before winds are forecast to exceed hurricane force, the commission said in a statement yesterday.

“Given the breadth and intensity of this historic storm, the NRC is keeping a close watch on all of the nuclear power plants that could be impacted,” NRC Chairman Allison Macfarlane said in an e-mailed statement. “Our extra inspectors sent to the potentially affected sites will continue, on an around-the- clock basis, to independently verify that the safety of these plants is maintained until the storm has passed and afterwards.”

Analysts said loss of outside power, which is necessary to keep nuclear cores and spent fuel cool, would test adjustments being made at the plants after an earthquake-triggered tsunami led to radiation releases at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant in 2011. The Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501) plant lost off-site power and backup generators failed after the earthquake.

Nature’s Power

Just as with Fukushima, plant owners “look back to see what flooding heights, wind speeds, etc. have occurred at the site and design their plants to survive repeats,” Dave Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in an e-mail. “But when nature reaches new levels, as at Fukushima, past protections may be insufficient.”

“Designing by rear-view mirror works when nature cooperates and stays consistent with the past,” he said.

U.S. nuclear plants are well-equipped to handle the threats from Sandy, said Arthur Motta, chairman of the Nuclear Engineering Program at Pennsylvania State University. “In terms of comparative risks, a nuclear power plant is safer than most of the other things nearby,” he said in an interview.

Plants in the path of the storm included Indian Point and Calvert Cliffs in Maryland, owned by Constellation Energy Nuclear Group LLC, a joint venture of Exelon and Electricite de France SA in Paris.

Flood Protection

“All plants have flood protection above the predicted storm surge, and key components and systems are housed in watertight buildings capable of withstanding hurricane-force winds and flooding,” the NRC said.

At Indian Point, debris in the Hudson River, which could disturb water-intake, poses a greater risk than flooding, Sheehan said in an interview. All the plants in the storm’s path were told to examine their vicinity for large objects that could become “airborne missiles” in high winds, he said.

Given the threat of loss of power, “it would be more responsible if NRC and plant operators would shut the plants down in advance,” Kevin Kamps, a radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear, a Takoma Park, Maryland, group that seeks to end nuclear power and nuclear weapons, said in an interview.

It takes longer to cool down the radioactive core at a plant operating at full power, he said.

“In terms of reactors, you had better hope those diesel generators work adequately,” Kamps said.

Backup Generators

Backup diesel generators and cooling systems at Fukushima failed after a 15-meter surge of water tied to a 9-magnitude undersea earthquake on March 11, 2011, led to the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. Hydrogen explosions occurred as water in the reactors and spent-fuel ponds boiled away and radiation leaked.

Motta, a member of a National Academy of Sciences panel on U.S. nuclear safety, disagreed and said shutting the plants now wouldn’t make much of a difference.

Hurricane Sandy crossed the New Jersey coast south of Atlantic City. With winds extending 1,100 miles, the storm shut the federal government in Washington and state offices from Virginia to Massachusetts. It halted travel, prevented U.S. stock markets from opening and upended the presidential campaign.