[NukeNet] Reactors Prone to Long Closings, Study Finds

[Bill Smirnow]

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/18/washington/18nuke.html
   Reactors Prone to Long Closings, Study Finds

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By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: September 18, 2006
WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 - An analysis of nuclear
reactors by a safety group has found that they are
prone to costly, lengthy shutdowns for safety
problems regardless of their age or the experience
of their managers. The finding could have
implications for companies considering building
new reactors.

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The analysis, by David Lochbaum, a nuclear
engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists,
counted 51 times that a reactor had been closed
for a year or more. Thirty-six of those shutdowns
were to restore an adequate level of safety by
fixing flaws in equipment, procedures or training;
11 were to replace major components required for
operations and safety; and 4 were for damage
recovery. In all, of the 130 power reactors ever
licensed, 41, were closed for at least a year. Ten
were closed twice.

Mr. Lochbaum said the most common reason for a
shutdown was for an "attitude adjustment" for
workers and managers, so they would be more
attuned to safety. He said he was surprised by
some of his findings, which are scheduled to be
released Monday. "I expected that the first plant
off an assembly line would have been challenged,
or troubled, but that there was a learning curve,
and the fourth or fifth or sixth plant for a
company would have avoided these problems," he
said. "But it wasn't the case."

But a vice president of the industry's trade
association, Marvin Fertell of the Nuclear Energy
Institute, said that the industry had, in fact,
learned from its errors, and that only experienced
operators would build new plants. And at the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Stuart A. Richards,
deputy director of the division of inspection,
said his agency had improved its inspections, to
focus on "risk-significant areas," and was now
able to find problems more promptly.

Extended shutdowns would be a bigger problem for
future plants because, in the past, electricity
customers of regulated utilities paid for them.
But some of the reactor construction projects now
being considered would be built as "merchant"
plants, with no guaranteed income, only revenue
from power sales.

The heart of the problem, Mr. Lochbaum said, is
that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is not good
at assessing the ability of a reactor staff to
keep the plant in good physical condition and
maintain training and other requirements. As a
result, he said, plants operate until serious
problems accumulate and force a shutdown.

"This is the wrong way to do business, from a
safety standpoint and an economic standpoint," he
said in a telephone interview.

Mr. Fertell, of the industry trade group, agreed.

The only reactor currently in an extended shutdown
is the Tennessee Valley Authority's Browns Ferry
Unit 1, in Alabama. It last ran in 1985. The
shutdown of more than a year that ended most
recently was at Davis-Besse, near Toledo, Ohio,
where workers found that an acid used in the
plant, boron, had corroded a 70-pound chunk of
steel in the reactor's vessel head, leaving only a
half-inch stainless steel liner.

Early in the era of commercial nuclear power,
analysts theorized that shutdowns were what was
known in the industry as "teething problems" and
that with experience, reactors would run more
smoothly. But most of the shutdowns came after the
reactors were 10 years old. The Davis-Besse plant
was more than 23 years old when it was closed in
2002. It was closed for more than two years.
Besides the hole in the reactor head, engineers
later found that crucial pumps that used water for
lubrication were prone to break down because of
debris in the water. Discovery of decades-old
design problems is common during lengthy
shutdowns.

While Mr. Lochbaum, a longtime adversary of the
nuclear industry, is often critical of the
companies that operate reactors, he said
regulators were the problem in this area. The
rules require reactors to have Corrective Action
Programs to keep track of physical and procedural
problems, and each lengthy shutdown is an
indication that the program itself is flawed, he
said. Regulators monitor the physical condition of
reactors, he said, but are not good at observing
the quality of the corrective programs. For
example, the commission gave high marks to the
program at Davis-Besse less than a year before
inspectors found that operators had let acid eat
through six inches of steel, bringing the plant
close to a catastrophic rupture.

Mr. Richards said he had not seen the report but
acknowledged errors by the commission in handling
the Davis-Besse case. But he said N.R.C.
inspections had been improved using a new process,
of which the Corrective Action Program itself was
a major component. And, he said, the commission
had previously penalized reactors for
accumulations of minor violations, adding them up
to count for a major problem; now it focuses only
on major problems.

Mr. Lochbaum said that after a reactor was shut
down for one reason, other problems were often
discovered. In an extended shutdown at the Crystal
River plant, in Florida, workers found design
defects even though the plant had been running for
nearly 20 years. He said the problems included
that, in an emergency, the pumps would not have
worked as intended and piping would have exposed
workers and the public to radiation.

"Did the plant's owner bring in busloads of
smarter workers after the N.R.C. put the reactor
on notice?" Mr. Lochbaum asked in the report. The
problem, he said, was that perception by the
inspectors that plant management was competent was
blinding them to problems at the reactors.

But Mr. Fertell, of the Nuclear Energy Institute,
said an extended reactor shutdown often became "a
monster can of worms." "You were basically under a
magnifying glass," he said, with inspectors
finding issues faster than management could
resolve them.