(Case in point. – promoted by Sue Prent)
Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee reported output at only 36% this morning. The reactor was forced to reduce power after one of the recirculation pumps, which cool the aging reactor, failed Sunday night.
ENVY has 24 hours to repair the pump, or it must shut down the reactor.
A planned shutdown for refueling had been scheduled for early October. ENVY changes out 1/3 of its fuel every 18 months.
As the end of the 18 month fuel cycle nears, the build up of fission products within the fuel bundles makes it more difficult to control the reactor. ENVY has reduced power slightly each week over the last several weeks. Last week, the reactor operated at 96% power.
Of course, that’s still 15% higher output than the Fukushima-style GE reactor was originally designed for. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Public Service Board allowed ENVY to increase output by 20% in the middle of the last decade.
Susan Smallheer is following the story at the Rutland Herald.
Now we can talk about reliability and economic impact and not safety!
ahem
Man they have those NRC rules, aka loop-holes engineered to the finest possible scientific tolerances.
A skeptic might think this kind of regulation could kind of motivate a quick half-assed repair(re-configuration?)to avoid a costly shutdown?
Great stuff duct tape
http://www.bostonherald.com/ne…
but it comes as no surprise. Entergy Louisiana’s good friends at the VT DOH just put the monthly monitoring well results online, AFTER the trial, safely away from headlines to obfuscate the fact that the plant has been leaking since 2005-2006 & continues. They don’t report the latest leak-of-the-week anymore because it appears to be leaking on an ongoing basis. Pipes disintegrating due to metal fatigue, embrittlement and/or microbiologically induced corrossion is not what I would consider reliable as it indicates there are other problems which are far worse besides leaking nuclear waste into the groundwater & aquifer the results of which were to be made public by Aug or Sept 2011.
Entergy played this game during the PSB docket hearing in Jan/2011 brought by CLF & other citizen groups asking PSB to shut the plant down until all leaks have been found, fixed & remediated. Irony of these ‘mishaps’ is rich.
During the hearing, plant sprung another leak which has continued, that is if the leaking had ever really stopped. Blaming elevated results on “Irene” quite a laugh.
DOH website used to have VY as a link on the home page, it now takes three links after home page to locate the results:
http://healthvermont.gov/envir…
The two variable speed Recirulation (Recirc) pumps take water from the reactor vessel and pump it back to the jet pumps in the reactor vessel. The variation in the flow rate through the core varies the reactor power, when in the power range-generating electric power (as compared to starting up the reactor, when control rods vary the chain reaction).
The pumps do not cool. It is the steam flowing out of the reactor that removes the atom-splitting heat.
The pumping function is not safety related.
However, the pump casings, seal and shaft are part of the reactor pressure boundary, and are safety related.
Having a recirc pump fail to run is an expected event. The “rule book” – Technical Specifications – requires what was done. Actions for Safety Related equipment problems are by this book, with no exceptions. All planned and analyzed for safety in advance.
In this event it is the reactor core that is the safety related equipment of concern.
…does this whole ‘not think or talk about safety’ issue relate to the whole plant? just the reactor? somewhere in the middle? at the fence line? (what happens at VY stays at VY!)
i mean, if legislators were concerned that workers were tripping over a decaying sidewalk all day, could they make comments like ‘VY should really put more $$ into grounds maintenance to keep workers safe’…? or is that verboten as well, and they’d have to argue ‘vy isn’t reliable because workers keep tripping and breaking their legs’…?
because this pump doesn’t do any heavy lifting of atoms (yeah, right), why the need to throttle down? its not like the radio button fell off in my ’72 pinto, more like the radiator has an issue, no?
bonus question:
when VY closes, and someone wants to open a strip club on the site (across from a school, but we’ll be sure to scan the fence line weekly for escaping porno-beams and stay withing allowable limits), would locals have a right to deny a permit, based on zoning, use, etc.? or will the strip club regulatory commission deny local control because only the government can regulate sex and sex related businesses. we wouldn’t after all, want all 600 dancers and bouncers to stop being productive members of society in VT, right? or can the public sex board issue a certificate of public good, and legislators and locals only comment on how reliable the club is… with no word about collapsing stages and bars, safety, quality, or what goes on inside… (not to mention that manager that claimed there were no secret ‘back rooms’ back there)
I’ll keep trying. It’s tough when “Nice try” confuses the Recirc pumps with the Feed pumps. Feed pumps put water in. It boils. Steam goes out to turn the turbine and generator to make electricity.
The recirc pump speed varies to vary reactor power, when generating (in the “power range”). They recirculate water from the reactor, back to it.
No one in the nuclear industry, regulators, or Public Service Board ever expected or said, much less promised, that nuclear steam electric plants would be 100% reliable -never have a problem requiring power cutback or shutdown. There was more than a half century of experience with fossil steam electric plants to benchmark expectations. Those plants also have less than 100% reliability.
Opponents of nuclear power complain of eveything that happens, without comparing these events to all other types of power generation. Is hydro electric power 100% reliable – never has a problem interrupting generation? How about wind? These complaints are just political tactics.
It was never said or promised that there would never be accidents that release radioactivity. The possibility was known from the beginning. Great efforts were made to make the odds against the possible accidents very great. Realisticly it was known from all other technologies that there would be accidents, and have to be lessons learned. See commercial air travel, and cars. Note that the Emergency Plan for nuclear power plants and other facilities is bsed on the assumption that there will be a significant release from the plant. Our cities and towns know that there will be fires, in spite of building codes, fire saftry progrms, and inspections; so there are fire departments. One might think that after thousands of years of using fire, we could do it without accidents. Perhaps we should give up using fire because it can’t be done perfectly.
Congress benchmarked nuclear power against the “continuous accident” of burning COAL, which kills 8,000 people a day world wide, through early deaths due to asthma. (World Health Organization) The acid rain and mercury in our New England lakes is not so great either.
For those who want perfection in electric power generation, talk to the opponents of wind power.
It may be important to consider judging technology on its own merits, seperating it from human errors.
For example, I believe in and support solar power for electric generation, as well as direct building heating.
Solyandra management took $500+ billion in loan guarantees from taxpayers, declared bankruptcy, then took the fifth ammendment defense before Congress. Applying the approach used by some to Vermont Yankee and nuclear power, it could be said the Solyandra proves solar power is no good and the people running it can’t be trusted.
For VY, communication and trust issues can be addressed by the Public Service Board, if they get a chance to act.
Meanwhile Vermont’s electric power plan seems to be “buy local-except electric power.” Green Mountain power is owned by a Canadian firm, Central Vermont is being sold to a Canadian firm, Green Mountain Power will buy nuclear power from Seabrook, much power comes from Hydro Quebec with a small part of it nuclear, and the New England grid power has a large slices of fossil and nuclear power.