U.S. reactor repairs seen topping $1 billion

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@EARTHLINK.NET>]

Index:



U.S. reactor repairs seen topping $1 billion

Fires, water leakage occur at Tsuruga reactor

IAEA to inspect Iran nuclear facilities in February

N.Korea tells IAEA to unseal nuke plant-Kyodo

USNRC Chairman to Leave in March

===================================



U.S. reactor repairs seen topping $1 billion



NEW YORK, Dec 12 (Reuters) - What started earlier this year as a 

couple of rust spots on a Midwest reactor lid has mushroomed into a 

repair bill for the U.S. nuclear power industry that is likely to top 

$1 billion.



FirstEnergy Corp. <FE.N> said it was surprised back in February when 

it found cracks in the lid capping the reactor at its 925 megawatt 

Davis-Besse plant in Oak Harbor, Ohio.



More surprising was the discovery of a hole in the 6-inch thick steel 

lid, eaten by boric acid that had been leaking for years through tiny 

cracks around the nozzles that guide fuel rods into the vessel that 

contains the nuclear reaction.



Davis-Besse's pressurized water reactor uses the same basic design as 

69 other U.S. nuclear reactors which together account for about 12 

percent of the nation's power supply.



Following the startling discovery at Davis-Besse, the federal Nuclear 

Regulatory Commission ordered special inspections at all of the 

nation's pressurized water reactors to determine whether any other 

vessel heads need to be pulled and replaced --a huge, costly job.



A Reuters survey of nuclear plant operators showed work is planned or 

already under way to replace vessel heads on 17 reactors.



While not all companies were willing to discuss the cost of replacing 

reactor vessel heads, those that did estimated the job would cost on 

average $60 million per unit.



At that price, replacement costs for the 13 units including Davis-

Besse would add up to roughly $1.02 billion, and more vessel heads 

may have to be swapped.



SOARING COSTS FROM DAVIS-BESSE



However, the replacement cost of the reactor head itself does not 

include the biggest expense -- down time.



A shut nuclear unit can cost its owners nearly $500,000 a day buying 

electricity it would have generated otherwise.



First Energy estimates the Davis-Besse outage is costing the company 

$10 million to $15 million a month in replacement power, soaring to 

$20 million a month in July and August when air conditioning pushes 

up electricity demand.



With 10 months of down time since February, the replacement power 

cost for Davis-Besse alone would average $140 million.



Because most utilities have regulated rates, they cannot 

automatically pass the repair and replacement power costs on to 

consumers without first winning regulatory approval.



"Basically our rates are capped in terms of what we can charge 

customers," FirstEnergy spokesman Richard Wilkins said.



The owners of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania 

have said they will replace the reactor lid in the autumn of 2003 

because of the difficulty and high cost of removing insulation around 

the head before inspection.



The $100 million cost of replacing the head at Three Mile Island, in 

part, has prompted the plant's owner, AmerGen Energy Co., to consider 

selling the reactor.



The head replacement process at Davis-Besse was nearly complete as of 

early December.



Davis-Besse has been shut since February when the corrosion was 

discovered, but the actual vessel head replacement took about 45 to 

60 days, Wilkins said. Davis-Besse is expected to resume power 

production in early 2003.



OVER TWO FEET OF CONCRETE



The replacement job is a formidable one.



An 18-by-18 foot hole has to be cut in the two-and-a-half foot thick 

concrete wall of the containment building, and the old vessel head -- 

an 85-ton metal dome about 17 feet in diameter and eight feet tall -- 

has to be eased outside.



The new vessel head is moved into the building and the hole in the 

containment building is closed and restored to its original technical 

specifications.



The old vessel head is decontaminated and wrapped in a protective 

shrink-wrap type material to be sent to a disposal facility in Utah 

to be permanently buried.



FirstEnergy, for its Davis-Besse facility, was able to purchase a 

replacement vessel head from another facility where construction had 

begun on a nuclear reactor but was never completed.

-----------------



Fires, water leakage occur at Tsuruga reactor



TSURUGA, Japan, Dec. 13 (Kyodo) - A nuclear reactor at Tsuruga 

Nuclear Power Station in Fukui Prefecture was shut down Thursday 

night after fire repeatedly broke out from a turbine cover, station 

operator Japan Atomic Power Co. said Friday.



The fire was soon brought under control, plant officials said.



Officials of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said earlier 

there was no sign of radiation leakage into the environment and there 

are no safety concerns about the reactor itself.



But there appears to be no precedent for manually shutting down a 

reactor because of a fire in the turbine area, they said.



The company also said an operator patrolling around the No. 2 reactor 

at the station on Friday found a leakage of steam which does not 

contain radiation from a feed-water heater in a turbine building.



The fire broke out from a heat insulating cover on the No. 2 

reactor's high-pressure turbine at around 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the 

plant in Tsuruga.



It was temporarily extinguished but broke out again, prompting 

officials to manually shut down the reactor at 9 p.m.



The fire then re-ignited briefly at around 10 p.m. Thursday and 12:30 

a.m. Friday, officials said.



Meanwhile, the Fukui police investigating the cause of the fires said 

Friday they suspect they were caused by super-heated lubricants that 

leaked from the axis of the turbine. The oil apparently seeped into 

the insulating material of the turbine cover.



Japan Atomic Power officials said operators of the reactor found 

lubricants spilled from the axis of the turbine Thursday afternoon 

and the first fire broke out when employees were trying to remove the 

cover of the turbine for inspection.



The lubricating oil is sent from a tank in the turbine building to 12 

turbine axes through a pipe, utilizing air pressure balance by an 

extractor. The oil circulates through the pipe to return to the tank, 

the company said.



The air pressure balance was disrupted because the company had the 

extractor repaired on Thursday and used a back up extractor. As a 

result, the lubricating oil stopped circulating and overflowed from 

nine of the 12 turbine axes, the police said.



The fire broke out after the oil was heated in the turbine cover as 

the turbine is fed with 280 C steam, the police said.



The insulators in the turbine cover were made of fiberglass bags 

filled with asbestos, the officials said.

------------------



IAEA to inspect Iran nuclear facilities in February



VIENNA, Dec 13 (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said on 

Friday it was aware of new nuclear facilities under construction in 

Iran, which U.S. officials said could be used to make weapons, and 

planned to inspect them in February.



Iran invited the inspectors after informing the International Atomic 

Energy Agency in September of an ambitious plan to build nuclear 

power plants and related fuel facilities over the next 20 years, IAEA 

spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said.



Gwozdecky said Iran did not specify details, including the purpose of 

the two construction sites at issue in the dispute with the United 

States, but invited the IAEA to send an inspection team headed by the 

agency's director general Mohamed ElBaradei.



"The director general, with a team of technical experts, plans to 

make such a visit in February 2003," Gwozdecky said.



"We don't jump to conclusions. We will visit shortly and determine 

for ourselves what the facilities are," he told Reuters.



Iran on Friday dismissed U.S. accusations that two nuclear sites 

under construction could be used to make a secret nuclear weapon.



"We don't have any hidden atomic activities. All our nuclear 

activities are for non-military fields," Iranian government spokesman 

Abdollah Ramazanzadeh told reporters on the sidelines of a political 

conference in Tehran.



He was responding to remarks by U.S. officials that two nuclear 

facilities near the central Iranian towns of Natanz and Arak, seen in 

commercial satellite photographs, were of a type which suggested Iran 

could use them to build a nuclear weapon.



Experts said even if the two new facilities turned out to be heavy 

water and fuel enrichment plants, that could point to a nuclear power 

programme just as well as to the development of nuclear wepaons.



"Even if they are heavy water and enrichment plants, Iran has a right 

to these. It's just that at a certain point they would have to 

declare them to the IAEA" for monitoring under the international 

nuclear non-proliferation pact, one nuclear expert said.



Iran is party to the international nuclear arms non-proliferation 

treaty and has an agreement with the IAEA to safeguard against the 

diversion of civilian nuclear material for weapons.



"The IAEA has not detected any diversion of nuclear material (in 

Iran) declared and placed under our safeguard," Gwozdecky said.



The Vienna-based agency has a mandate to ensure nuclear facilities 

around the world are used solely for civilian purposes as well 

as coordinating global nuclear power safety.

-----------------



N.Korea tells IAEA to unseal nuke plant-Kyodo



TOKYO, Dec 13 (Reuters) - North Korea has told the International 

Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) it wants the nuclear monitoring 

body to unseal and remove surveillance cameras from a nuclear plant 

at the centre of a suspected 1990s weapons programme, 

Kyodo news agency reported on Friday.



The report, from Vienna, quoted IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei as 

saying the agency had received a letter from the communist 

state making the demand.



Pyongyang said on Thursday that it would reactivate the nuclear 

facility, raising the stakes in a standoff at the world's last Cold 

War 

flashpoint.



The decision to restart the reactor, mothballed in 1994 after an 

international crisis over alleged production of weapons-grade 

plutonium there, escalates a showdown with the United States over a 

second nuclear programme being pursued by the isolated and 

poor communist state.



Analysts have said Pyongyang's latest move -- which it said it had 

been forced to take after a U.S.-led decision to suspend oil aid to 

the country -- appeared to be a desperate attempt to force Washington 

to the negotiating table.



In a statement from Vienna, Elbaradei called on Pyongyang to act with 

restraint and refrain from any unilateral action that might 

make it hard for the monitoring agency to keep tabs on those nuclear 

materials subject to international safeguards.



"It is essential that the containment and surveillance measures which 

are currently in place continue to be maintained," ElBaradei 

said in the statement.

------------------



USNRC Chairman to Leave in March



WASHINGTON (AP) - Richard Meserve, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 

chairman, said Thursday he will resign from the agency 

at the end of March, more than a year before his term expires.



President Bush will nominate his replacement on the five-member 

commission and name a new chairman. The nomination requires 

Senate confirmation.



Meserve, selected for the post and made chairman by President Clinton 

in 1999, said he will become president of the Carnegie 

Institution, a prominent research center in Washington.



Meserve, a Democrat, leaves at a time when the agency is facing a 

range of new challenges. They include protecting nuclear power 

plants from terrorists and approving a proposed nuclear waste site at 

Yucca Mountain in Nevada.



In remarks Thursday to agency staff, Meserve said he felt ``we have 

responded effectively to the terrorists' challenge to our national 

security.''



Meserve is one of three Democrats on the commission. Commissioner 

Greta Joy Dicus, a Democrat, is expected to depart in June when her 

term expires.



The other members of the commission are Republicans Jeffrey S. 

Merrifield and Nils J. Diaz, and Democrat Edward McGaffigan Jr. By 

law, only three commission members may be of the same party, so one 

of Bush's nominees will have to be a Democrat.



-------------------------------------------------

Sandy Perle

Director, Technical

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Service

ICN Plaza, 3300 Hyland Avenue

Costa Mesa, CA 92626



Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100  Extension 2306

Fax:(714) 668-3149



E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net

E-Mail: sperle@icnpharm.com



Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com/

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com/



************************************************************************

You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To unsubscribe,

send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu  Put the text "unsubscribe

radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail, with no subject line.

You can view the Radsafe archives at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/