( – promoted by simplify)
On the anniversary of the expiration of the CPG and the expected planned closure date, SURPRISE! more troubles at the troubled VYNPS in Vernon VT. Looks like news involving the panel blow-out from in the secondary containment in the top floor of the reactor building which happened on Monday at VY couldn’t be buried until Friday & beginning of the weekend news dump, but making it to Thursday from Monday still quite a feat.
Both Brattleboro Reformer & Rutland Herald had stories published in todays papers about the latest ‘mishap’.
-all emphasis added
[..]NRC also announced that Yankee, which is currently shut down for refueling and maintenance, had a panel in the secondary containment of the reactor building “blow out” early Monday morning because of over-pressurization in the building[..]
Reportedly, when those highly-trained “experts” at the plant started the heating, ventilation & air conditioning the exhaust system failed:
[..]workers had started up the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system in the reactor building early Monday, but the exhaust fan did not come on, creating what he called a “slight increase” in air pressure in the pressurized building.
So:
A 6-by-10-foot aluminum panel was blown out and landed dozens of feet away, on top of the turbine building. The panel is supposed to be attached to a wire rope, according to Uldis Vanags, the state nuclear engineer who sent a memo about the problem to members of the Vermont State Nuclear Advisory Panel.
Once again working their euphemistic magic at every juncture. No problems here, just a “slight increase” of air pressure, like the infamous “small 1/8 inch holes” in the leaking pipes & other pipe leaks emitting those “tiny puffs of steam”.
My my. A bit difficult to minimize a “6′ x 10′ aluminum panel”. I see they didn’t attempt to call it a “relatively small light-weight metal panel”-too obvious.
According to NRC & Entergy, there was:
no discernable increase in the release of radiation from the reactor building with the hole.
So it couldn’t be “discerned”. How about “measured”?
NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said a senior health physicist had done calculations on whether the opening presented a public danger and concluded it did not.
Looks like the unnamed “health physicist” used “calculations”. Extrapolated from one their trusty “models”?
Reformer:
“The panels worked as designed,” said Rob Williams, spokesman for Yankee. “But we are looking into why the exhaust fans didn’t operate.”
“Our resident inspectors at Vermont Yankee, with support from Region I Office specialists, will continue to review the activities until the issue is fully resolved, including the development of a root cause evaluation and corrective actions,” said Sheehan.
A temporary cover has been put in place pending the installation of a permanent fix.
http://www.reformer.com/localn…
More dubious double-speak. “Worked as designed”. Ha! Good old VY, thrifty as ever with their duct-tape bubblegum-methodology slaps a “temporary cover” on it & calls it a day.
In a memo to the Vermont State Nuclear Advisory Panel, Uldis Vanags, the nuclear engineer for the Vermont Department of Public Service, noted the panels are secured with a wire rope to prevent them from falling to the ground when they release.
Works just fine?
“Just as it was designed”:
“However, in this case the panel that released fell onto the turbine building roof,” wrote Vanags.
But of course:
“There are no doses to the public or plant workers because of this,” Sheehan said[..]
Ray Shadis:
“In short, even the most obtuse observer should now understand that Vermont Yankee’s containment safety systems have a very high probability of failure,” Shadis wrote in an email Wednesday.
In other news, as Entergy Louisiana and VY employees continue to bombard Vermonters with letters to editor and their everything’s-fine-business-as-usual shtick, what’s really happening:
Changes in the energy marketplace have forced Entergy Nuclear to write down the value of Vermont Yankee nuclear plant from $517 million to $162 million.
The NRC took the unusual step of asking for additional information from Entergy Nuclear about the finances of Yankee, citing a recent Entergy filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Ray Shadis:
Now NRC too has its doubts as to whether VY even meets the financial qualifications for a license,” he added.
– all emphasis added
The industry has repeatedly told us that US nuclear plants were designed so that radiation would NEVER be released. Especially during the Chernobyl accident, we were repeatedly assured that US plants had “containments” while Chernobyl (built by those lousy Ruskies) didn’t.
Vermont Yankee’s containment has 2 systems, and we now know that neither one works.
The “primary” containment consists of a “torus,” huge donut-shaped piping which surrounds the reactor vessel and which is intended to cool radioactive steam in the event of a LOCA (loss of cooling accident), and thus to retain the radiation which escapes the reactor within the plant.
There’s just one teeny, weeny little problem, which is that GE discovered shortly after these plants were built that the pressures arising from a major LOCA would be greater than the torus was designed to withstand. If the pressure were not relieved, the torus would presumably break (others can be more precise, I’m sure, than I) and release radioactive its gases (and liquids).
Accordingly, VY installed vents to relieve the torus pressure in the late 1980s (about 15+ years after the problem was recognized, but who’s counting.
Little attention was paid to this at the time, but it’s really a pretty startling revelation: specifically, it’s acknowledgement that the plant’s primary safety design would fail if there were a major LOCA and that it’s better to release SOME of the radiation through a vent than ALL of it through a torus break.
Since Fukushima demonstrated that this really can and DOES happen, and since massive amounts of radiation were released there, NRC staff has determined that these vents should be filtered. It’s a pretty obvious suggestion when you think about it. But the industry, which repeatedly tells us that its ONLY concern is safety, is resisting the change. (HINT: Anyone who REALLY cared about safety would either have shut these plants down entirely (best option) or installed vent filters on March 12, 2011).
Now let’s go back to the most recent incident. If radiation IS released from “primary containment,” then the reactor building itself acts as a “secondary containment.” It’s designed to have negative pressure, meaning that gases released into the building “want” to stay inside rather than move towards the outside.
But the recent incident showed us that system doesn’t work either at VY. The exhaust fan failed, causing a blowout panel to blow out, BUT all this occurred not only with no LOCA, but when the plant is down for refueling.
So let’s review what we now know. In the event of a major accident, VY’s primary containment will fail and its vent will open with results quite similar to those at Fukushima. If that happens, any hope that the reactor building’s secondary containment will keep the gases inside is now at least in doubt as well. And Entergy, who thinks about safety before all else, wants to continue operating for another 20 years without installing a filter on the vent it never should have needed in the first place.
I don’t know about you, but all this makes me feel just peachy, perched about 18 miles (or less) from the plant.
John. I think this is what those who say that what happened at Fukushima could happen here, or anyplace there is this model of reactor design mean. But are then drowned out by the chorus of ‘nuclear experts’ who then yell their favorite word “redundancies”. So it looks like those redundancies don’t work either.
http://vtdigger.org/2013/03/21…
http://www.evacuationplans.org…
http://www.evacuationplans.org…
http://vtdigger.org/2013/03/21…
http://www.reformer.com/localn…
http://www.courthousenews.com/…
so much time has passed since I’ve been following this. This story did not get much attention, but it was pretty compelling & I actually believed Entergy was in deep trouble back then when I read it & actually used the information for a story.
I’ve been wondering what could have happened that it has lasted even this long since this situation seemed very dire.
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.c…
I’ve been sidelined by work obligations this week, but am keeping an eye on things from that sideline.
Seems like it’s been all downhill for Entergy since their very public screw-up at Superbowl.
The NRC is right to be concerned about Entergy’s financial ability (nevermind willingness) to do necessary maintenance for safety. And finally they’re beginning to get the point that Entergy can’t be counted on to pay the tremendous cost of decommissioning.
Better later than never, I suppose; but it’s already too late to prevent them defaulting on decommissioning costs.
Or in this case, there ‘was’ more…leaking? Yes leaking.
So the ‘leaks & lies’ continue at Vermont Yankee.
*all emphasis added
http://vtdigger.org/2013/03/25…
This story never made it into the news until the last couple days. Clearly one of the most well worn pages in the Entergy Louisiana/NRC playbook is “Move Along-Nothing to see Here” Because in the case of nearly every mishap we are told “System Worked As Designed” and “At No Time Was the Public Health or Safety At Risk”. Soo slippery.
Yeah, “Less than two feet” sounds so much nicer than “Over a foot of water was found leaking”.
More bubblegum:
Nothing to see here, just move along folks:
“The bottom line is that the water in the switchgear room manhole was quickly identified and action taken to mitigate it,” Sheehan said. “There were no impacts on the electrical equipment.”
Er, correction Mr. Expert sir, inspecting & replacing the seals would have prevented the problem.
How the NRC looked at the systems? I’m pretty sure they don’t. When they say they ‘inspected’ something, I don’t believe they actually look at it. Nuclear power plants ‘self report’, they e-mail or hand a document to NRC official. Correct me someone if I’m mistaken.
The NRC report was added to GMD by auclair a day or two ago, however this mishap appears to have come on the heels of the other most recent mishaps-so now there were at least four failures, that were reported.
http://www.rutlandherald.com/a…
Very likely this was not included since it would be difficult to claim & quite a stretch to report the worn seals, which have been scrutinized plus issues before, so the “worked just as designed” doesn’t cut it as clearly the worn seal(s) should have been replaced long ago.
Worked “Just as designed”. So did my roof-when covered with too much snow, it caved in, ‘just as it was designed to do’. If I don’t repair worn pipes, they leak-just as designed. Their continued recitation of this line is very telling & cold comfort since according to their arbitrary connotative meaning, this translates into ‘Nothing Can Ever Go Wrong’. Meltdown? Just as designed.