Hot Incident at VY on Ice for 60 Days

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Hold the presses!  There’s been another incident report from Vermont Yankee.  Only this one took two months for the NRC report to appear, and it clearly illustrates that there were significant safety and reliability concerns at the time:


LOSS OF VITAL AC POWER WHILE SHUTDOWN

“This 60-day telephone notification is being made pursuant to 10CFR50.73(a)(2)(iv)(A) and 10CFR50.73(a)(1) to describe an invalid actuation of a containment heat removal system.

“On October 11, 2011, with the reactor shutdown for refueling, a partial loss of vital AC power was experienced which resulted in a loss of shutdown cooling as well as PCIS group 2, 3, 4, and 5 half isolations. The actuation was determined to be invalid as it occurred because a breaker supplying power to the ‘A’ vital AC was manually opened, resulting in actuation of the associated PCIS logic circuitry. The Group 4 actuation resulted in a complete isolation of the single train Residual Heat Removal shutdown cooling suction path. The shutdown cooling path was isolated for approximately 12 minutes resulting in a coolant temperature increase of approximately 2 degrees F. At the time of the event, the reactor cavity was flooded with the spent fuel pool gates removed and the normal fuel pool cooling system in operation to provide reactor cavity cooling. Based on this, there was no impact on public health and safety.”

The licensee notified the NRC Resident Inspector.

That’s one hell of a temperature climb in just twelve minutes!

What took them so long to log the incident?

About Sue Prent

Artist/Writer/Activist living in St. Albans, Vermont with my husband since 1983. I was born in Chicago; moved to Montreal in 1969; lived there and in Berlin, W. Germany until we finally settled in St. Albans.

7 thoughts on “Hot Incident at VY on Ice for 60 Days”

  2. Even if you take safety out of the picture completely, why would we want to rely so heavily on a plant and a plant operator that is as unreliable as VY and its owners? Electricity needs to be there when we need it, and we need to be dealing with plant operators who know what they’re doing and don’t lie to the public about it.

  3. …if you were 60 days late paying your electric bill?  Now, there’s an idea to go with the Occupy movement.  Not paying your electric bill until Entergy closes Vt. Yankee and pays for the clean-up.

    And I’m sure we can think of a lot of other bastard bills not to pay.  And a consumer boycott and credit card max-out (without paying) to get the attention of all those critters running for office next year.  People do have power–and it’s just like Wall Street’s: MONEY.

  4. NRC Chairman Jaczko was quoted couple days ago addressing post Fukushima safety concerns. He says some things that may shed some light on Neil Sheehan’s curious “attrition” remark about VY personnel and the “A” or “B” generator bulf-up eh…flub-up.

    Jaczko said he was not ready to declare a decline in safety performance at U.S. plants, but said problems were serious enough to indicate a “precursor” to a performance decline.

    […]”There are some things we want to keep an eye on to make sure we are not seeing really true declines in performance.”

    […]“The softer side of the safety business can have a real impact,” he said, referring to plant operations and worker performance.

    Interesting noises Jaczko makes but (maybe it’s just institutional NRC speak) he really sounds to me more like an outside observer than the chairman of a “powerful” federal watchdog agency.

    http://www.google.com/hostedne…

    “The attrition has not had an impact on safety,” said Sheehan, noting that the NRC’s two resident inspectors continued to monitor for that and other safety issues.”

    http://www.timesargus.com/arti…

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