6/9/2011 | America’s Nuclear Spent-Fuel Time Bombs

Source: Eastern Group Publications
Date: 6/9/2011
by: Robert Alvarez

Now that many Americans have stopped paying attention to Japan’s nuclear catastrophe, shocking new details about its severity are finally coming to light.
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6/7/2011 | Fire at Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant in Nebraska Temporarily Disables Spent Fuel Pool Cooling

Date: Published 6/11/2011
by: Jason Chan


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The Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant, which is near the Missouri river has been shut down since April 9th, for refueling and due to Missouri river flooding concerns.  There has been flooding reported at the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant parking lots but not within the facility itself.  Quoting the Omaha World Herald:

...
Nuke plant: No floodwater has breached the nuclear power plant at Fort Calhoun, say officials from both the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Omaha Public Power District. NRC spokeswoman Lara Uselding and OPPD spokesman Mike Jones said Thursday that some floodwater is pooling in some of the plant's parking lots, but there had been no confirmed reports of floodwater entering the currently idle plant, they said.
... [1]

At nuclear power plants, spent fuel is often stored on site in large pools of water which have pumps which circulate the water in order to keep the temperature down so that the spent fuel rods do not heat up and catch on fire or melt down. The spent fuel rod pool cooling was temporarily lost resulting from a fire affecting some of the safety systems. On June 7, 2011 9:30 AM a fire alarm sounded and non-essential workers were evacuated. At 9:40 AM an alert was raised with the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) regarding a fire starting in a room containing electrical equipment. Per the NRC's own Preliminary Notification of Event or Unusual Occurence report PNO-IV-004:

...
DESCRIPTION: At approximately 9:40 a.m., Tuesday, June 7, 2011, the Fort Calhoun Station
(FCS) declared an ALERT due to a fire in an electrical switchgear room. Automatic fire
suppression systems operated as expected. Licensee fire brigade personnel, the Blair Fire
Department, and the Fort Calhoun Fire Department responded to the fire. The fire was
confirmed extinguished at 10:20 a.m. The plant was already in a cold shutdown condition following completion of a planned refueling outage and was maintained safely in cold shutdown. [2]
...

At 1:15 PM the alert was terminated and the evacuated workers returned. [3]  No alerts of this seriousness have been issued by the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant since 1992 when electrical problems and a faulty valve resulted in 20,000 gallons of reactor coolant being dumped in to the basement of the containment building. [3]

According to Pro Publica the nuclear power plant did have a backup spent fuel pool pump which was not needed in this case:

...
Mike Jones, a spokesman for the plant's owner, the Omaha Public Power District, said Fort Calhoun has a backup pump to provide water to the spent fuel in case the main system is lost. That pump, which runs on a separate power supply from the rest of the plant, was inspected and standing by on Tuesday, but plant operators restored main power to the pool before the emergency pump was needed, he said. [4]
...

Although the fire was quickly extinguished within an hour of the initial fire alarm, two fire departments were called in which indicates external help was needed to get the fire under control.  Nuclear engineer and industry expert Arnie Gundersen in a recent interview with Robert Knight of the a-Infos Radio Project said that he felt it was fortunate that a full scale disaster was averted, but that this was mostly due to luck rather than good planning.  The situation could have gotten much worse according to Mr. Gundersen, who stated that had all cooling systems failed it would have taken about 80 hours for the water to evaporate and put the spent fuel rods in jeopardy. [5]

Sources:
[1] Omaha World Herald: The latest on flooding
[2] NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) PN (Preliminary Notification)  Report:

PNO-IV-11-004

06/07/2011

Fort Calhoun Station: Fort Calhoun Station Declaration of an ALERT Due to Fire Affecting Plant Safety Systems

[3] Omaha World Herald: Rare alert triggered at nuclear plant
[4] Pro Publica: Electrical Fire Knocks Out Spent Fuel Cooling at Nebraska Nuke Plant
[5] Radio4all.net: NEBRASKA NUKE DISASTER - Flood, Fire and Heat

Note: I am including a link to the NRC Preliminary Notification Reports in the left sidebar which should ideally be scanned on a daily basis considering the flooding going on does place many nuclear power plants in harm's way.

6/4/2011 | Pa. nuclear plant has 3rd shutdown in 1 week

Source: AP via ABC 6abc.com
Date: 6/4/2011

POTTSTOWN, Pa. (AP) - June 4, 2011 (WPVI) -- Reactors at an eastern Pennsylvania nuclear plant have shut down unexpectedly three times in the past week, but regulatory authorities say no safety problems have been reported.
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5/10/2011 | Browns Ferry, Alabama Nuclear Plant Cited For Safety

Source: Huffpost GREEN/Associated Press
Date: 05/10/11 11:20 AM ET
by: RAY HENRY

ATLANTA -- Federal regulators ordered in-depth inspections Tuesday at a nuclear power plant run by the Tennessee Valley Authority in northern Alabama after deciding the failure of an emergency cooling system there could have been a serious safety problem.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a rare red finding against the Browns Ferry nuclear power plant near Athens, Ala., after it investigated how a valve on a residual heat removal system became stuck shut. Safety regulators said only five red findings – the most severe ranking the agency gives to problems uncovered in its inspections – have been issued nationwide in the past decade.
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