40th Anniversary of Browns Ferry fire signals US reactors still vulnerable

On March 22, 1975, Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) Browns Ferry nuclear power station, at full power, experienced a near catastrophic fire near Athens, Alabama.  Workers were using a candle flame to check for airflow leaks and plug  holes along an extensive network of electrical conduits and cable trays under the Unit 1 control room. The  flame was instead sucked into a cable tray accidentally setting fire to the combustible polyurethane foam insulation wrapping the electrical circuits inside a cable tray. The ensuing fire quickly spread inside the cable spreading room like a blow torch and through wall penetrations into the reactor building. More than 1,600 electrical cables routed in 117 conduits and 26 cable trays were destroyed within the first hour including 628 “safety-related” cables vital to safely shutting down the reactors. The fire knocked out more than a dozen reactor control systems including all of the emergency core cooling systems for Unit 1 and most of the cooling systems for Unit 2. Like most equipment, the automated fire suppression systems failed when the fire destroyed power cables. Smoke and fumes entered the control room. The fire burned out of control for seven and a half hours with temperatures reaching 1500 degrees Fahrenheit before it was finally extinguished by the local fire department.  A catastrophic nuclear meltdown was narrowly averted only by “sheer luck” according to one official.

The harrowing experience prompted a major regulatory overhaul of fire protection at US nuclear power stations. After five years of wrangling with a nuclear power industry, in 1980, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission passed a compromised version of new safety requirements of the nuclear industry to comply with an upgraded federal fire code.  The new regulations were made law to assure that no single fire can ever again simultaneously knock out both the primary and the backup equipment and associated electrical circuits needed to achieve safe shutdown and maintain cooling of the reactor.  

In specific, where both the primary and backup electrical circuits are routed into the same fire zone; 1) one set of associated circuits must be wrapped in a three hour protective fire barrier system; 2) alternately, one train wrapped in a one hour rated fire resistant barrier with no intervening combustible material and seperated from the backup associated circuits by automated fire detection and suppression systems or; 3) a minimum of 20 feet separating the two associated circuit systems. 

US nuclear power plant operators including TVA were to comply with the required federal fire safety upgrades. Meanwhile, TVA had to shut down five nuclear power plants, including Browns Ferry Unit 1, 2 and 3, in 1985 and place them on “administrative hold” after discovering that the plants' construction did not match the approved design blueprints.  Beginning in 1992, there was an industry-wide scandal involving widely deployed but fraudulently tested fire barrier materials that turned out to be combustible and drastically failed to meet time requirements for protecting the electric cables.  

Browns Ferry Unit 1 remained at zero power for more  than two decades while TVA spent $1.9 billion to bring the reactor’s as-built configuration into compliance with design specifications; all except for the NRC fire protection code requirements. In May 2007, the NRC allowed Browns Ferry Unit 1 to restart the reactor exempted from the very fire code its 1975 fire promulgated. Instead, unable to enforce compliance with the 1980 fire code, NRC  provided TVA, along with almost half of the remaining US reactor fleet, with a still unapproved, complex  alternative safe shutdown fire protection plan through computer modeling basically arguing that fires of duration similar to the 1975 fire are too remote to worry about any longer. Industry complains today that the alternative "fire modelling" plan is too expensive to implement. The other half of the fleet is essentially operating on nearly one thousand exemptions granted by NRC from the 1980 fire code. 

As a result, US nuclear reactors remain in a nether world dangerously straddled between two fire protection regulations and not fully compliant with either.

The Browns Ferry Unit 1, 2 and 3 are GE Mark I boiling water reactors identical to Japan's Fukushima Daiichi units that melted down on March 11, 2011.

Nuclear Licensing Board Examines Brittle Vessel Risks at Entergy’s Palisades Atomic Reactor; Critics Call for Permanent Shutdown

NRC file photo of Entergy Nuclear's Palisades atomic reactor on the Lake Michigan shore in Covert, MIAs reported by a press release, a coalition of environmental groups, including Beyond Nuclear, today testified before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB), at the agency's HQ in Rockville, Maryland, just outside D.C.

The coalition, represented by Toledo attorney Terry Lodge, defended its intervention against an Entergy License Amendment Request (LAR) to further weaken reactor pressure vessel (RPV) embrittlement/pressurized thermal shock (PTS) safety regulations.

Palisades has the worst-embrittled RPV in the U.S., at risk of a PTS fracture, Loss-of-Coolant-Accident, core meltdown, and catastrophic release of hazardous radioactivity. A bad precedent at Palisades will then be applied by NRC to approve operations at other dangerously brittle pressurized water reactor (PWR) RPVs across the U.S.

The coalition intervened on Dec. 1, 2014. Entergy Nuclear and NRC staff counter-attacked on Jan. 12, 2015. The coalition rebutted the attacks on Jan. 20.

Today's "oral argument pre-hearing" was essentially an ASLB exercise to determine whether the coalition's intervenion is worthy of an evidentiary hearing on the merits of the contention. The ASLB is scheduled to rule on the admissibility of the intervenors' contention within 45 days.

On March 9, the coalition filed a parallel intervention regarding loss of Charpy V-Notch Upper-Shelf Energy in Palisades RPV, another form of age-related degradation.

Coalition to press its case against Palisades' RPV safety rollbacks at March 25th NRC licensing board hearing

Entergy's problem-plagued Palisades atomic reactor in Covert, MI, on the Lake Michigan shoreline.A U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) will hold an oral argument pre-hearing on Wednesday, March 25th beginning at 10am Eastern, regarding an environmental coalition's intervention against further regulatory rollbacks regarding Entergy Palisades' reactor pressure vessel (RPV), the worst embrittled in the U.S. The hearing will be held at ASLB chambers at NRC's HQ in Rockville, Maryland, but a listen-in phone line is being provided. The hearing is scheduled to last two hours, till noon Eastern, but there is some chance it will run longer than that.

Palisades is located in southwest Michigan, on the shoreline of the Great Lakes, drinking water supply for 40 million people in 8 U.S. states, 2 Canadian provinces, and a large number of Native American First Nations (see photo, left).

We encourage environmental allies and the media to listen-in to the ASLB hearing, in order to watchdog this vital safety issue. RPV neutron radiation embrittlement, and consequent pressurized thermal shock (PTS) risks, are serious at many pressurized water reactors (PWRs) across the U.S. Any regulatory rollbacks rubber-stamped by NRC at Palisades would set bad precedents that could then be applied at other embrittled PWRs in the future.

According to Mr. Sachin Desai, ASLB law clerk: "The phone number for the oral argument is 800-857-9645. The passcode is 9568305. This will be a listen-only line."

Mr. Desai has also communicated that "Members of the public interested in attending or listening to the March 25, 2015 oral argument must reach out to me, the Board’s law clerk, beforehand [by Mon., March 23] either by phone or e-mail.  My phone number is 301-415-6523...[and] e-mail (Sachin.Desai@nrc.gov)." More.

"Experts warned of nuke work overruns"

As reported by Matt Kempner in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the two new atomic reactors under construction at the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Waynesboro, Georgia are "more than three years behind schedule," and costs for just one partner, Georgia Power (a subsidiary of Southern Nuclear) "is at least $1.4 billion, or 23 percent, over original projections." More.

"PG&E overlooked key seismic test at Diablo Canyon nuclear plant"

As reported by David R. Baker in the San Francisco Chronicle, "Pacific Gas and Electric Co. replaced $842 million of equipment at the heart of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant without first making sure the new gear could pass a vital seismic safety test required in the facility’s license, The Chronicle has learned." (See full text of article here.)

The systems, structures and components in question include new lids, as well as replacement steam generators, for the twin unit nuclear power plant. The revelation comes in the aftermath of the permanent shutdown of California's other operating nuclear power plant, San Onofre Units 2 and 3, due to widepsread damage from defective replacement steam generators. That fiasco has turned into a multi-billion dollar boondoggle.

The Chronicle article quotes Dan Hirsch:

“I’m frightened that they’re making almost the exact same mistake we saw at Fukushima,” said Daniel Hirsch, a lecturer in nuclear policy at UC Santa Cruz...

“There was a too-cozy relationship between the nuclear industry and regulators in Japan, and that led to the fiction that it was very unlikely that you’d have an earthquake and a tsunami and a loss-of-coolant accident at the same time,” said Hirsch, who also serves as president of Committee to Bridge the Gap, a grassroots nuclear safety group.

The article also quotes Damon Moglen:

“If key safety equipment has been installed using the wrong data, (Diablo Canyon) needs to be shut down, and we need a public, transparent investigation into the adequacy of the license and the safety of this plant,” said Damon Moglen, senior adviser to the Friends of the Earth environmental group...

Friends of the Earth last year filed a lawsuit claiming the Nuclear Regulatory Commission illegally allowed PG&E to amend the seismic safety portion of its license without public hearings. The move came after one of the commission’s own former inspectors at Diablo Canyon argued that the plant was no longer operating within the terms of its license and should be shut down until PG&E demonstrated it could withstand earthquakes from several recently discovered fault lines, including the Shoreline. The commission rejected that idea.

“This is a regulator who’s not prepared to regulate and didn’t come down on a key safety issue,” Moglen said. “It’s a regulator who’s looking the other way.”

In related subject matter, the 1986 book The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology (University of Chicago Press), by Langdon Winner, warned about the risks presented by nuclear power to life on Earth. The author happened to see whales migrating past the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, just out to sea to the west. The realization struck him that this new technology, nuclear power, puts at risk even ancient forms of life, such as whale species tens of millions of years old.