Nuclear Power Industry News

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant Weekly Review

Nuclear Street News Team — Fri, 24 May 2013 10:33:00 GMT

A 5.9 magnitude earthquake, a hydraulic oil spill and the release of an International Atomic Energy Agency report highlighted the last week at Fukushima Daiichi.

Recent developments related to the Tokyo Electric Power Co. plant blacked out following Japan's 2011 earthquake and tsunami include:

Plant Stable After Saturday Quake

Just before 3 p.m. Saturday, a 5.9 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture shook the plant. No damage was found, according to a TEPCO release. Although inspections did reveal a spill of about 4 liters from the overflow pipe of a treated water tank servicing units 5 and 6. The same tank had overflowed onto the ground the previous day, and testing at that point indicated radioactive materials were below detection limits. To keep it from leaking again, TEPCO reduced the water level to about 1 meter below the top of the tank.

Unit 3 Equipment Leaks Oil

Just before the earthquake, a worker found about 20 liters of oil leaking from remotely controlled heavy equipment removing debris from the upper levels of unit 3. Oil did not enter the unit's spent fuel pool, according to a TEPCO release. Crews cleaned it up, and an inspection showed the oil came from a detached hose on a hydraulic cutter.

IAEA Releases Report

An IAEA team inspected Fukushima Daiichi last month, and on Thursday the agency released its assessments of conditions at the plant and the roadmap to decommission it. The report is available for download here.

"Although a relatively stable cooling of the fuel (and fuel debris) in the reactors and spent fuel pools has been established and is adequately removing decay heat, there are several challenges to achieve a sustainable situation," the report reads. "The accumulation of enormous amounts of liquids due to the continuous intrusion of underground water into the reactor and turbine buildings is influencing the stability of the situation and requires additional countermeasures at the short term. For ensuring the long-term stability of the fuel (and fuel debris) cooling, it will be necessary to continue the efforts to improve the reliability of essential systems, to assess the structural integrity of the site facilities and to enhance the protection against external hazards."

Westinghouse Appoints New Americas President and Nuclear Plants VP

Nuclear Street News Team — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:25:00 GMT

Westinghouse announced it will reorganized a portion of its business and made two high-level executive appointments this week.

On Tuesday, the company named Mark Marano as president of the Americas Region, effective May 31. According to a Westinghouse release, he was previously a vice president for Areva in Charlotte, N.C., and has also worked for GE-Hitachi and American Electric Power.

On Thursday, the company then announced that Jeffrey Benjamin will head its new nuclear power plants division. It will combine the existing "nuclear power plants project delivery" and "nuclear power plant business and project development" segments into a single entity within Westinghouse. Deva Chari, who headed the project delivery segment, will now focus on the China market while Sandy Rupprecht will continue to lead new project development efforts.

Benjamin last worked for Rolls-Royce, where he headed nuclear services in North America, England and France after positions at CH2M Hill and Exelon.

Scana: New Summer Reactors On Budget While Some Milestones Behind Schedule

Nuclear Street News Team — Thu, 23 May 2013 10:34:00 GMT

Scana and its South Carolina Electric and Gas subsidiary continue to make headway in building two new reactors at the V.C. Summer nuclear plant, reporting to state regulators that the project is on budget but has seen some milestones drop behind schedule.

Project spending through the end of this year is anticipated to come in $173 million below the approved cost schedule, Power Engineering Magazine reported. In a quarterly report to the South Carolina Public Service Commission, Scana said total cost estimates are unchanged for its 55 percent stake in the $9.8 billion project.

The two Westinghouse AP1000 units built by Chicago Bridge & Iron are scheduled to come online in 2017 and 2018. Crews recently poured the basemat of unit 2, and more than half of the concrete for its turbine building basement walls has also been poured. Nonetheless, the PSC report noted that 34 project milestones have been delayed from one to 13 months, with another 15 milestones accelerated to keep the project on track.

NRC to Inspect Harris Nuclear Plant RPV Head

Nuclear Street News Team — Thu, 23 May 2013 09:26:00 GMT

Regulators have ordered a special inspection of Duke Energy's Harris nuclear plant after ultrasound testing showed a small weakness in its reactor pressure vessel head.

The testing was conducted during an earlier refueling outage. Further analysis revealed the quarter-inch flaw, and the plant shut down May 15 for repairs. According to a release from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the flaw near a nozzle did not penetrate the RPV head wall and there was no indication of leakage.

All the same, the NRC sent an additional two inspectors to the plant who will spend the next week and a half on site to review previous testing records, repair plans and the company's actions to date.

“There was no immediate threat to the public or plant workers, but because the discovery is on the vessel head and was not seen in the original review, we are sending specialists from our Atlanta office to further evaluate the issue,” NRC regional administrator Victor McCree said in the release.

Harris is a single-unit plant near Raleigh, N.C. It is a Westinghouse three-loop pressurized water reactor first licensed in 1986, according to the NRC.

A Duke spokeswoman told Reuters that repairs would be complete in a few weeks.

Oil Pump Fire Interrupts Pilgrim Nuclear Plant Startup

Nuclear Street News Team — Wed, 22 May 2013 10:25:00 GMT

Workers extinguished a small fire in the turbine hall of Entergy's Pilgrim nuclear plant Monday, interrupting its startup following a refueling outage.

At about 4 a.m., workers detected a fire in an auxiliary oil pump motor, and the on-site fire brigade put it out with a fire extinguisher, according to a report filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. At the time, operators had just started powering up the single-unit plant. The reactor had reached criticality and the coolant system water was about 180 F when the startup was aborted, according to the report.

A tripped breaker alerted the local fire department, the Patriot Ledger reported Tuesday, although the fire was out when off-site firefighters arrived.

No emergency was declared. While Entergy has not provided further details on the incident, the company told the NRC the fire was confined to the motor in the turbine building lubricating oil room. The plant near Boston is a General Electric boiling water reactor first licensed in 1972, according to the NRC.

Palisades Nuclear Plant Outage Extended for Tank Repairs

Nuclear Street News Team — Wed, 22 May 2013 09:33:00 GMT

The Palisades nuclear plant will stay offline until early summer as crews repair the bottom of a water tank.

On May 5, the safety injection refueling water storage tank began leaking at a rate of about 90 gallons per day, exceeding a threshold set earlier by federal regulators. The source of the leak has been identified as a small crack in a nozzle weld at the base of the tank, an Entergy spokeswoman told the Kalamazoo Gazette. Plans call for replacement of the tank's bottom, which will keep the plant out of service for weeks.

Entergy is looking for a long-term solution to leaks from the tank, which also caused an unplanned shutdown last year when water entered the control room below it. Michigan Public Radio reported that the most recent leak spilled water onto the roof that drained into Lake Michigan.

The incident did not pose a threat to human health, though, as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported the water's radiation was an order of magnitude less than the 100 millirem regulatory limit for public exposure. On Thursday, the agency plans to host a public webinar on its oversight of the plant.

OSHA Orders Wolf Creek Nuclear Plant Contract Worker Reinstated

Nuclear Street News Team — Tue, 21 May 2013 10:27:00 GMT

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has ordered Enercon Services to reinstate a fired engineer, concluding that the company retaliated against him for reporting an unsafe condition at the Wolf Creek nuclear plant in Kansas.

The civil and structural engineer, whom OSHA did not name, objected to the way a trench for new security-fence cabling would be constructed over buried plant service-water piping last January. According to an OSHA release issued Monday, the trench required backfilling to meet soil coverage requirements for the pipes. Company management wanted the trench backfilled with concrete before the arrival of inspectors from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to OSHA. But the engineer who reported the soil concerns refused to draft an engineering justification for the concrete use and was fired a few days later.

The OSHA decision requires Enercon to reinstate the engineer and to pay $261,153 in back pay and damages, plus attorney fees. The agency also found that the company violated the whistle-blower provisions of the Energy Reorganization Act.

In a release, the man's lawyers noted that an NRC report dated May 3 found that Enercon and the plant did not complete required documentation before permitting the excavation near the piping.

Algerian Energy Minister Anticipates New Nuclear Plant By 2025

Nuclear Street News Team — Tue, 21 May 2013 09:26:00 GMT

Algerian authorities have set a new target date to build the country's first nuclear plant.

On Sunday, Minister of Energy and Mining Youcef Yousfi said he expects the plant will be operational in 2025, the state-run APS news service reported. That would be five years later than an earlier target. Nonetheless, he said the government has been working toward establishing a plant and recently created an engineering institute to train nuclear engineers and operators.

In 2007 and 2008, the country signed nuclear cooperation agreements with Russia, France, the U.S., China and Argentina, according to the World Nuclear Association. Around the same time, the Algerian government announced plans for an operational power reactor by 2020 with more units coming online at five-year intervals.

Nuclear Sites Unaffected by Canadian Earthquakes

Nuclear Street News Team — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:25:00 GMT

Earthquakes in northeast Canada rattled buildings in several cities Friday but had no effect on nearby nuclear facilities.

A 5.2 magnitude quake was the largest of the tremors near Ottawa and struck at about 9:45 a.m. Its epicenter was about 50 miles from the Chalk River Laboratories, the birthplace of Canada's Candu heavy water reactor. In a release, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission said the quake had no effect on that site, its National Research Universal Reactor, or any other nuclear facility in the country. A release from Chalk River confirmed that a site walkdown showed no damage at the labs.

According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., the quake could be felt as far away as Toronto and Cleveland.

New Technology Holds Potential for Extracting Uranium from Seawater

Nuclear Street News Team — Mon, 20 May 2013 09:31:00 GMT

A recently published study has outlined a technology that could significantly improve the ability to extract uranium from seawater – a process that's far from commercial viability now but could provide future supplies of the reactor-powering element, should land-based resources become constrained.

As noted in a recent article in MIT Technology Review, uranyl ions exist in seawater at three parts per billion. That's an extremely dispersed resource, but one potentially 1,000 times greater than known uranium reserves on land, thanks to the ocean's size. Chemical-coated plastics currently can extract about three to four milligrams of uranium for each gram of absorbent left in the ocean for several weeks. Research led by chemists at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and published in the journal "Chemical Science" debuted a material that collected four times that amount during laboratory tests.

The presence of other, competing ions attaching to the material under real-world sea conditions would likely make a commercial application less effective. Nonetheless, the paper's authors concluded that the metal-organic framework created for the study was significantly more effective than existing polymers. The paper suggests the material could also make a promising alternative to organic polymer absorbents used to extract uranium from nuclear waste or acid mine drainage.

The paper can be found here (free subscription required). It was supported by the Department of Energy's Nuclear Energy University Program.

Westinghouse and China’s SNPTC Sign MOU to Develop and Deploy Small Modular Reactor Technology

Nuclear Street News Team — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:20:00 GMT

Westinghouse Electric Company and State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. (SNPTC) announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to establish a partnership that would enable the two companies to work together to develop a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) standard design, based on the Westinghouse Small Modular Reactor technology, that shall be licensable both in the U.S. and China.

Westinghouse believes that global investment and access to global markets are essential components to making commercial operation of SMR plants a reality, and this MOU provides a potential path to establish such a mutually beneficial, long-term partnership.

“Both Westinghouse and SNPTC have expressed the desire to build a framework for cooperation in SMR development that explores the potential of both domestic and international markets. Toward that end, we are in the early stages of negotiations of an agreement that we expect will provide design, licensing, construction, and operational certainty that no other SMR supplier can match. We expect to be the first to market with the support of our Missouri-based partners in the U.S. and SNPTC in China,” Westinghouse Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Kate Jackson said. “Our partnership with SNPTC will position our SMR design for international markets by combining the expertise of two leading technology providers. We will bring to market a highly innovative SMR design that uses proven components and systems, and provides superior safety performance, efficiency, ease of operation, cost predictability, and rapid deployment.”

Westinghouse expects that this partnership would accelerate the commercial deployment of SMR technology in the U.S., and anticipates the SMR plants deployed in the U.S. would be sourced and manufactured in-country.

The Westinghouse SMR design is derived from the Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear power plant, which received U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Design Certification in 2011.

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant Weekly Review

Nuclear Street News Team — Fri, 17 May 2013 10:34:00 GMT

The last week in Japan brought positive news at Fukushima Daiichi – where Tokyo Electric Power Co. said an underground tank leak was much smaller than originally thought – and bad news for two other nuclear plants, where decisions by regulators are likely to keep them offline.

Recent developments related to the 2011 nuclear accidents that followed Japan's earthquake and tsunami include:

Underground Tank Leak Overestimated

On Thursday, TEPCO announced that closer inspection showed one of Fukushima's underground tanks holding radioactive water leaked about 20 liters, as opposed to 120 metric tons as estimated earlier, Kyodo reported. Two other underground tanks are also leaking, and TEPCO has been moving the water into above-ground storage.

Regulator Questions Safety of Tsuruga Plant, Monju Breeder Reactor

Two other plants confronted decisions by Japan's new nuclear regulator Wednesday that threaten their operation in the future. The Nuclear Regulation Authority said it considers a fault underneath a reactor at Japan Atomic Power Co.'s Tsuruga plant to be active. The new agency lacks the authority to force the plant's decommissioning, but the Yomiuri Shimbun reported the NRA's chairman said the agency did not plan to carry out safety inspections required for it to restart. The agency might reopen the issue if more seismic data becomes available.

The NRA also halted a proposed test run of the Monju breeder reactor, the Japan Times reported. The agency said almost 10,000 components at the plant went uninspected, and that the Japan Atomic Energy Agency facility suffered from poor communication and management. Monju is a sodium-cooled fast breeder reactor that uses recycled MOX fuel. It began operating in 1994 as a research facility but was shut down for 14 years following a sodium fire in 1995. When the Fukushima accidents idled nearly all of Japan's reactors, Monju was preparing to restart after repairing damage from a fuel-loading device that fell into its reactor vessel.

Ernest Moniz Confirmed as New Head of DOE

Nuclear Street News Team — Fri, 17 May 2013 09:28:00 GMT

The Senate has unanimously confirmed a former member of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future to head the Department of Energy.

Ernest Moniz will take the position vacated by Steven Chu and lead the agency charged with overseeing a broad range of energy and nuclear cleanup initiatives.

The U.S. nuclear industry's main trade group congratulated Moniz on his appointment Thursday, encouraging him to continue support for small modular reactor research and the MOX fabrication plant at the Savannah River Site. Nuclear Energy Institute CEO Marvin Fertel also urged him to resume licensing for the Yucca Mountain repository for spent nuclear fuel.

"Having served on the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, Dr. Moniz has a clear sense of the course our nation should take to safely, securely and successfully manage commercial used nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste from U.S. defense programs over the medium and long terms. This includes development of a repository for long-term disposal," Fertel said.

Moniz is a professor of physics and engineering systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. According to his Blue Ribbon Commission biography, he has been on the MIT faculty since 1973 and served as a DOE undersecretary from 1997 until early 2001.

Duke: Catawba Tritium Release Poses No Health Risk

Nuclear Street News Team — Thu, 16 May 2013 10:26:00 GMT

Duke Energy said tritiated water leaked from its Catawba nuclear plant on Wednesday, reporting the event to regulators but emphasizing tritium levels were within safe limits.

More than 100 gallons leaked from a fiberglass discharge pipe from a unit 2 turbine building sump, according to a report filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission early Wednesday morning. At that point, crews were installing a temporary sump pump in the turbine building to isolate the leak. The report put the tritium concentration at 8.964 E-6 uCi/mL.

In a release, Duke noted that level stands at less than half the Environmental Protection Agency's limit for drinking water.

"Once we found the water, we immediately took action to isolate the pipe, and repair plans are in progress," Catawba Site Vice President Kelvin Henderson said in a release. "All water is contained at the Catawba site and is not in close proximity to any drinking water wells."

Duke owns the plant near Charlotte, N.C., with the North Carolina Municipal Power Agency No. 1, the North Carolina Electric Membership Corp. and the Piedmont Municipal Power Agency. According to the NRC, Catawba operates two Westinghouse reactors first licensed in the mid-1980s.

Chinese Companies Pitch Their Reactor Designs for Tentative South African Nuclear Project

Nuclear Street News Team — Thu, 16 May 2013 09:26:00 GMT

China's nuclear industry is wasting no time in wooing South Africa as it considers building several new reactors to meet its expanding energy needs.

The country's government will make a decision on whether to move forward with a 9,600 megawatt project this year, Public Enterprise Minister Malusi Gigaba recently told Ventures Africa. If approved, the project would be broken into three stages, each building 3,200 megawatts of capacity. The country currently generates about five percent of its power from two reactors at Eskom's Koeberg plant. Rumors of a potential bid solicitation to build new plants have circulated for more than a year.

At a conference Tuesday, three Chinese companies publicized their interest in the project. They included China National Nuclear Corp., according to a report in Engineering News, an Africa-focused magazine. At the Energex Africa exhibition near Johannesburg, the State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. also made the case for its Westinghouse AP1000-based CAP1400 reactor, while China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding Corp. pitched its ACPR1000 design based on French technology.

At Plant Vogtle, New Construction Photos and Good News From the Court

Nuclear Street News Team — Wed, 15 May 2013 10:26:00 GMT

Construction at Georgia's Plant Vogtle, where Southern Co. is leading a project to add two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors, continued to make visible progress in April. That work will continue unabated thanks to an appeals court decision Tuesday rejecting a suit by nine environmental groups opposed to the expansion. The Atlanta Business Chronicle reported that the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decided not to hear the case, which sought to reopen the licensing of the AP1000 following the Fukushima Daiichi accidents in Japan.

Meanwhile, at the massive construction site near Augusta, the unit 3 reactor pressure vessel arrived by rail as workers furthered their progress assembling cooling towers, nuclear islands, containment vessels and other structures.

Ruling on SONGS Could Delay Restart

Nuclear Street News Team — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:23:00 GMT

A panel of experts within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has ruled plans that could allow a reactor at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station to run under reduced power amount to a license amendment requiring a potentially lengthy hearing process that could delay the restart planned for this summer.

Recently installed steam generators at both SONGS reactors experienced premature tube wear that has kept the plant idle for more than a year. With peak summer demand just around the corner, Southern California Edison planned to restart unit 2 temporarily at partial power after meeting the inspection and technical requirements outlined in an NRC confirmatory action letter related to the steam generators.

Friends of the Earth sought to stall or halt a restart, and on Tuesday the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board sided with the environmental group, according to an NRC release. Whether the ruling on the hearing requirement for the confirmatory action letter will actually delay a restart, though, is uncertain. The board's decision can be appealed to NRC commissioners. Further complicating the matter, SCE has pursued a second track to restart the reactors, filing for an amendment to unit 2's license that potentially could allow it to restart before a hearing takes place.

Exciter Vibration Shuts Down North Anna Reactor

Nuclear Street News Team — Tue, 14 May 2013 10:31:00 GMT

Operators bringing North Anna unit 2 out of a refueling outage shut down the reactor again after reports of vibration and arcing in the main turbine.

The Westinghouse reactor was at 60 percent power Friday when workers reported increased vibration and arcing on a bearing of the main generator exciter, according to a report filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The manual trip actuated auxiliary feedwater pumps automatically, and decay heat was removed using condenser steam dumps, according to the NRC.

A Dominion spokesman told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that about 20 people were troubleshooting the generator, including Siemens technicians and workers on site for the earlier refueling outage that began April 7. The unit remained offline Monday, and Dominion would not estimate when it would return to service.

Westinghouse, China's SNPTC Form AP1000 Supplier Certification Joint Venture

Nuclear Street News Team — Tue, 14 May 2013 09:30:00 GMT

The companies building the first AP1000 reactors in China announced a joint venture Monday that will further their cooperation and potentially encourage cross-border supplier networks for the reactor's equipment.

Westinghouse and State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. said the joint venture, called SNPTC-WEC Nuclear Power Technical Services (Beijing) Co., will provide AP1000 supplier qualification services globally. It will help develop the supply chain for the Westinghouse reactors in China, while also qualifying suppliers from other countries to enable both imports and exports.

“This joint venture also provides the opportunity for collaboration in new markets. We expect to provide new opportunities for business both within and outside of China. By forming this joint venture, we have a mechanism for delivering our goods and services together to a broader range of customers," Westinghouse CEO Danny Roderick said in a release.

SNPTC is the general contractor at the Sanmen and Haiyang plants, whose four units will be the first operational AP1000s in the world. The generation III reactor was designed by Pennsylvania-based Westinghouse, which is owned by Toshiba.

China represents, by far, the largest market for reactors and related products in the world, with 28 units currently under construction, according to the World Nuclear Association. Plans have called for an additional six AP1000 reactors to be built at Sanmen, Haiyang and Xudabao. Another 20 AP1000 units were planned for inland sites but put on hold following the country's post-Fukushima regulatory changes, and the reactor design has been mentioned in proposals for dozens of other Chinese sites with less-concrete timelines.

GAO Releases More Details on Contested Y-12/Pantex Contract

Nuclear Street News Team — Mon, 13 May 2013 10:25:00 GMT

Questionable procurement decisions at the National Nuclear Security Administration have emerged with the release of a ruling on a contested contract awarded for management of the Y-12 and Pantex sites.

Babcock & Wilcox currently oversees the sites and was among the bidders that challenged the award to a Bechtel-led consortium called Consolidated Nuclear Security in January. The Government Accountability Office, which hears appeals of federal contract decisions, announced its recommendation to reopen the contract process earlier but only recently released its detailed reasoning for doing so.

In its ruling, the GAO stated, "We sustain the protests based on the agency’s failure to reasonably evaluate the feasibility and size of the offerors’ proposed cost savings, as required by the terms of the solicitation."

It noted that the source selection authority – the official in charge of picking the winning bidder – changed days before the award. Earlier, NNSA staff evaluated the likelihood that cost savings proposed in each bid would actually be realized. But, the GAO said, the new SSA "acknowledged that he did not perform any independent cost savings analysis, and further testified that he was unaware that various portions of the proposed cost savings had been evaluated by the CSAC (the agency’s own 'financial management specialists') as 'not reasonable,' 'partially reasonable,' or 'cannot determine.'"

The amounts of the questionable savings associated with each bid were redacted from the ruling released to the public. Nonetheless, the GAO said NNSA should have considered them and sought additional information where appropriate.

In its conclusion, the ruling read, "We also recommend that, based on that evaluation, the agency make a
new source selection decision taking into consideration the relative size of the offerors’ feasible cost savings."