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Entergy’s Arkansas nuclear plant requires highest level of inspection oversight from NRC

Nuclear One earns worst rating  Entergy’s Russellville plant in line for intense inspections, Arkansas Online, 10 May 15  By David Smith Arkansas Nuclear One has the worst performance rating out of all 100 nuclear power plants in the country, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission says.

The power plant is the only one in the country in the “column four” category of the commission’s rating of overall plant performance. The column four designation means the plant gets the highest level of inspection oversight from the commission.

Column one power plants require the fewest inspections. Plants in column five aren’t permitted to operate, the commission said.

It is rare for a plant to be in column four, said Victor Dricks, a spokesman for the commission.

“Sometimes there are one or even two plants in column four,” Dricks said. “It generally takes several years of very concerted effort on the part of a nuclear power plant operator to address issues and then be returned to column one.”

No nuclear plant has ever been placed in column five, Dricks said.

Representatives from the NRC and Entergy Arkansas will discuss the plant’s “significant decline in performance” at a meeting Tuesday in Russellville. The plant’s two nuclear reactors account for about 61 percent of the electricity that Entergy Arkansas generates in a year.

The public meeting at Lakepoint Conference Center, 61 Lake Point Lane near the nuclear plant, begins at 6 p.m.

Arkansas Nuclear One has received two findings of “substantial safety significance” that pushed its performance rating down into column four.

The first was filed in June last year in connection with the March 2013 handling of a 1 million-pound turbine stator, which fell 30 feet while it was being moved by a contractor, killing of one worker and injuring eight others. The accident occurred in a non-nuclear part of the plant.

The second finding, filed in January, is related to the 2013 accident. It involved Entergy’s failure to design, construct and maintain the seals that protect safety-related equipment in the emergency diesel fuel storage building from flooding.

When the stator fell, it damaged a water main, Dricks said. “The fire pump started and discharged thousands of gallons of water into the turbine building,” Dricks said. “There are floor seals that should prevent the water from flowing down into an auxiliary building. But the seals were defective, so water flowed into areas where it shouldn’t have been.”

Commission inspectors later discovered there were more than 100 unsealed conduits that allowed the water into the auxiliary building, Dricks said.

“They also found some degraded hatches,” Dricks said.

The cumulative effect of these two violations moved the plant into column four, the commission said……..http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2015/may/10/nuclear-one-earns-worst-rating-20150510/?f=business

May 13, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA