nuclear-news

Another Florida nuclear plant in safety trouble?

Cooling tubes at FPL St. Lucie nuke plant show significant wear Yet another Florida nuclear plant may be in trouble. Tampa Bay Times, Ivan Penn 22 Feb 14, More than 3,700 tubes that help cool a nuclear reactor at Florida Power & Light’s St. Lucie facility exhibit wear. Most other similar plants have between zero and a few hundred.

Worst case: A tube bursts and spews radioactive fluid. That’s what happened at the San Onofre plant in California two years ago. The plant shut down forever because it would have cost too much to fix…….FPL is so confident in St. Lucie’s condition that it boosted the plant’s power. The utility acknowledged that will aggravate wear on the tubes, located inside steam generators.

Critics say that’s like pressing hard on the accelerator, even when you know the car has worn brakes.”The damn thing is grinding down,” said Daniel Hirsch, a University of California at Santa Cruz nuclear policy lecturer. “They must be terrified internally. They’ve got steam generators that are now just falling apart.”…….

In 2007, FPL installed two new steam generators for $140 million, intending them to last until the plant’s license expires in 2043. Each generator contained about 9,000 tubes, which are 50 to 70 feet long. In 2009, FPL shut down the reactor for routine refueling. An inspection found that the tubes were banging against the stainless steel antivibration bars, leaving dents and wear spots. More than 2,000 tubes showed some wear in 5,855 separate places. (A tube can be worn in multiple spots.)

At that time — this was three years before San Onofre — it was by far the most wear found at the 20 or so similar plants with new generators, according to filings with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Salem 2 plant in New Jersey had 1,567 wear indications when first inspected, but no other plant had more than a few hundred. The typical plant had fewer than 20.

Aging steam generators near the end of their useful lives can develop significant tube wear, but to sustain thousands of wear indications just a couple of years after installation is unusual……..

“I’d have to agree that every steam generator has dents,” Gundersen said. “But the magnitude of what is going on at St. Lucie is off the charts. These guys are a hundred times worse than the industry average.”…….http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/energy/cooling-tubes-at-fpl-st-lucie-nuke-plant-show-significant-wear/2166886

February 24, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized