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NRC engineers wanted to shut down davis-bessie-messie
Vina K Colley wrote:
> (The Plain Dealer, Saturday, July 6, 2002, page 1) NRC engineers
> wanted to shut Davis-Besse07/06/02John Funk, John Mangels and Stephen
> Koff
> Plain Dealer Reporters
>
> Staff engineers at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last fall wanted
> their bosses to order the shutdown of the Davis-Besse nuclear power
> station by year's end.
>
> They feared there might be dangerous cracks in nozzles in the
> reactor's lid. They were concerned about the lack of inspection
> information they were getting from the plant, according to NRC
> documents. And they realized FirstEnergy Corp. intended to operate the
> reactor without a new inspection beyond the time the NRC considered
> prudent.
> But top NRC managers ultimately decided not to issue the order.
>
>
> hey
> reasoned
> it
> was "very unlikely" that cracks would cause the lid to rupture. They
> also judged that even if such an accident happened, the public's risk
> was acceptably low. They went along with Davis-Besse's request to
> operate six weeks beyond the Dec. 31 date the agency set for
> inspecting other nuclear plants.
>
> What neither the NRC nor FirstEnergy, Davis-Besse's operator, knew was
> that the reactor not only already had cracks, but also that acid in
> the reactor's coolant had leaked through them and bored a 5- by 7-inch
> hole all the way through the heavy steel lid.
>
> Only the lid's thin stainless steel liner, bulging into the hole, kept
> the radioactive coolant from spewing into the reactor building in an
> unprecedented accident.
>
> NRC Chairman Richard Meserve revealed the internal debate in a letter
> this week responding to questions about the close call at Davis-Besse.
>
> The questions came from U.S. Reps. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo and Edward
> Markey of Boston.
>
> "Had we been aware of the degradation [rust hole], the agency would
> have taken the appropriate regulatory actions to shut down the reactor
> for the required inspection," Meserve wrote.
>
> The NRC's inspector general is examining how the decision to delay the
> Davis-Besse inspection was reached, and whether it mirrored what the
> inspector general found to be a flawed agency decision in a similar
> case two years ago involving a reactor near New York City.
>
> "When Arthur Andersen gets it wrong, the shareholders pay the price,"
> said Steve Fought, legislative director for Kaptur. "If the NRC gets
> it wrong, everybody could end up paying the price." Fought said
> Kaptur's congressional staff is reviewing Meserve's letter and its
> hundreds of supporting documents. "It's not just a question about the
> company," he said. "It's a question about how the NRC acted too."
>
> To justify a shutdown order, the NRC would have had to prove the
> action was necessary to protect the public, Meserve wrote.
>
> Relying on FirstEnergy's own risk assessment calculations, the NRC
> staff determined that operating the plant past Dec. 31 could increase
> the risk of a reactor core-damaging accident beyond what the agency
> normally would consider acceptable. But the chance of such an accident
> posing a danger to the public was low enough to be within the agency's
> allowable limits.
>
> Based on the information the agency had at the time, NRC managers
> decided they didn't have enough reason to halt Davis-Besse's operation
> early.
>
> "After considerable deliberation and increased [FirstEnergy]
> management attention, it is the staff's judgment that sufficient
> information is available to justify operation of the Davis-Besse
> facility until Feb. 16," according to a confidential NRC staff report
> issued Nov. 30, 2001. The date was a compromise, since FirstEnergy
> originally had sought to operate until March 31.
>
> During the shutdown, workers inspecting for cracks in the nozzles that
> allow control rods to pass through the reactor lid accidentally found
> the rust hole, covered by a thick layer of "lava-like" boric acid. The
> company is estimating it will spend $200 million buying replacement
> power and repairing the crippled reactor.
>
> The issue that prompted the debate within the NRC about what to do
> with Davis-Besse began last year. In early 2001, operators of a
> nuclear plant in South Carolina similar to Davis-Besse reported
> finding cracks in some of the stainless-steel tubes, or nozzles, that
> allow the reactor's control rods to pass through the lid and into the
> nuclear core.
>
> The cracks were large and threatened to encircle the nozzles,
> increasing the risk they would fracture and shoot out of the lid,
> propelled by the reactor's high operating pressure.
>
> The NRC last August alerted utilities across the nation operating all
> 69 pressurized water reactors like Davis-Besse. They asked 13 plants,
> including Davis-Besse, that were at the greatest risk for having the
> kinds of cracks found at the South Carolina facility to explain why
> they believed their reactors could safely operate beyond Dec. 31.
>
> FirstEnergy said it had reviewed inspection records from 1998 and 2000
> and had concluded that there was no sign of leakage from nozzle
> cracking. It made this argument even though its own records showed
> that much of the reactor lid was caked with brown/red deposits of
> boric acid more than an inch thick and that workers had to use
> crowbars to remove the rock-hard deposits.
>
> The company wanted to delay inspection until its long-scheduled April
> 1, 2002, shutdown for refueling. That way, costs would be lower and
> inspectors' exposure to radiation would be limited.
>
> When the skeptical NRC staff asked for more information, FirstEnergy
> promised that it would lower the temperature of the reactor to limit
> growth of any cracks. It also pledged to defer inspection and
> maintenance of safety systems to keep them available in case of an
> accident.
>
> Finally, the company told the NRC it would give reactor operators
> special training on how to handle the kind of lid rupture the agency
> believed could happen at Davis-Besse.
>
> In an August internal memo, an NRC analyst worried that the operators'
> current level of training might be inadequate.
>
> "There is concern that the event would evolve in a different manner
> than that expected by plant operators and cause confusion," a staffer
> in the Division of Systems Safety and Analysis wrote.
>
> Union of Concerned Scientists nuclear engineer David Lochbaum said
> using risk assessment analysis to justify a six-week extension is
> flawed, charging that the NRC was merely looking for an excuse to
> allow the company to continue operating.
>
> "If you think nozzles are broken and you are not allowed to operate
> with broken nozzles, then I think your answer is that that is your
> answer," Lochbaum said.
>
> "When you don't like that answer . . . you play with the numbers
> again. That's what they did."© 2002 The Plain Dealer. Used with
> permission.
>
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