( – promoted by BP)
I have added information from the Rutland Herald after the jump in addition to the original diary.BP
Well Entergy’s Vermont Yankee continues what could well become a series of 40th anniversary celebratory repair events, including a hopefully festive epoxy removal from the malfunctioning condenser unit. What do you get a nuclear power plant for its 40th anniversary? Perhaps a traditional gift such as a Ruby or Garnett? Maybe something useful, a new condenser or dry casks might be a safe bet.
Susan Smallheer at the Rutland Herald is doing a great job of keeping this story alive but got to kick the rest of Vermont media in the knees. Only six days ago the big demonstration at the plant was big all over Vermont news now the media seems to have moved on.
original diary starts: As of this morning, Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee is operating at only 31% of capacity, while attempts are made to clean up the mess they’ve made of their condenser.
Susan Smallheer in the Rutland Herald has the details as of Monday, hidden behind a paywall.
Key quote:
The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant is again operating at reduced power, and has been ever since its 40th anniversary last week, because of continuing problems with its condenser, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In its continuing effort to defer needed maintenance and postpone spending, ENVY wants to wait till 2016 to replace the condenser. Replacement is projected to cost between $150 million and $200 million.
Last Fall, Entergy coated the condenser tubes with epoxy in an effort to continue operating with worn out equipment. In what seems to have come as a surprise to ENVY, coating the tubes reduced their heat transfer ability to such a degree that the reactor has been forced to cut power repeatedly.
Now ENVY has begun the laborious process of removing the recently applied epoxy.
ENVY: NOT Clean, NOT Safe, NOT Reliable
Additional bits from the Rutland Herald.
The plant was at 94 percent power Monday morning and records on file with the NRC show that ever since last Wednesday, the plant has slowly been reducing power after a short period at 100 percent.
And this comment about the plant’s condenser issue from spokes-flack-person Larry Smith is deserving of more explanation:
Entergy Nuclear spokesman Larry Smith declined to comment about the most recent problem with the condenser, and said he could talk about the issue today. He said the delay was for “proprietary reasons” but declined to elaborate.
And more to follow in the coming weeks as things warm up:
On Monday, Sheehan said that as the temperatures warm up, and the temperature of the Connecticut River increases, Yankee will have to reduce power.
Arnie Gundersen [a nuclear engineer and consultant with Fairewinds Associates of Burlington] said that now is the time for Entergy to remove the epoxy, since Entergy would lose even more revenue in the summer at reduced power.
But he warned that removing the epoxy is much more difficult than putting it on.
VY’s 40th is off to a special start.
http://www.rutlandherald.com/a…
Hey, it worked on those terrorists. Remember? Shit, by 2016, a clunker car with a boom box driving by that plant will probably st off a major event.
By then, they will have squeezed the last ounce of profit out of VY and abandoned ship.
It’s a stubborn problem and the NRC’s Sheehan can’t talk about it now!
Sounds like they gooped it up with too much epoxy.
What could “proprietary reasons” possibly mean!
Don’t fall for it it’s a classic NRC scare tactic.
http://www.rutlandherald.com/a…
Or the more generic “Condenser Genie” or just “Epoxy Wizard”.
T.Brady is engineering a new game today.
Best kind of trolling is process trolling.
Entergy is rushing an emergency order of 10 55 gallon drums of Goo Be Gone up to VY in hopes that it’ll get all the chewing gum out of the massive cracks that naturally exist in their 40 year old critical component they refused to replace.
And we are supposed to trust these goobers?
See, Tom, it’s the blatant moronicness of the nuclear industry that I don’t trust, like building Diablo Canyon on an earthquake fault line! Or paying your CEO $100M over 5 years instead of investing it in a nuclear plant at the end of it’s designed life-span. “Trust me because I’m a nuclear engineer’, just isn’t enough.
A.)Yankee’s 40 year old condenser.
From the Rutland Herald Tuesday morning:
http://www.rutlandherald.com/a…
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/…
It’s like…oops…somebody done fergot to turn the heat off under the coffee pot. It melted down. Geez. Gosh. Ya know, the next thing will be prison labor. I mean, we’re already loading up our prisons with all kinds of petty criminals who are now being put to work making shit for corporations. How ’bout some ‘work release’ inmates to operate corporate nuke plants? Not high level ‘expert’ jobs, but shit like: “Hey Bill, take that bucket of waste out and dump it in the compost pile.” Tom’s gonna love this comment. Gimme an 0, Tom–I love ’em.
How’s this for a childish prank?
A friend of mine used to work for a company that went all over the world epoxy coating pipes in power plants, especially heat exchangers. It takes a team of workers with hyper-duty sandblasters and specialized sprayers to prep the tubes and apply proprietary epoxy. It can take a couple of 7-day weeks to do a large heat exchanger. That’s real money.
The epoxy is formulated to resist abrasion, of course, so removal is going to cost beaucoup.
Consider that some of the existing tube material is inevitably going to go away with the epoxy, leaving the tubes slightly weaker than they were before. Which was, apparently, weak enough to require epoxy reinforcement. Hmmm…
Troubled plant inching its way up?
…if and when we NUKE Iran or North Korea, you will argue the ‘technical’ merits of nuclear war? Vermonters just don’t get it, do we? We don’t want tritium, cesium, and a host of other nuclear iums in our rivers, streams, and ground water, but we’re not experts, so how can we know how much we can take, and our little children can take, before that first trip to the hospital? We are so fucking dumb up here. Maybe a good dose of radioactive water will make us smarter.