Safety-significant reactor vessel flaws reported worldwide

NRC flle photo of the problem-plagued Palisades atomic reactor, in Covert, MI on the Lake Michgan shoreline. Van Buren County to the east in the background is one of Michigan's most vital agricultural areas. Lake Michigan is a part of the drinking water supply for 40 million people downstream in 8 U.S. states, 2 Canadian provinces, and a large number of Native American First Nations.A rash of potentially risk-significant flaws have been reported around the world recently, in reactor vessels old and new. The listing below is far from exhaustive, but merely shows news from recent days.

Age-degradation in old reactors

Beyond Nuclear is challenging reactor pressure vessel (RPV) degradation at Entergy Nuclear's Palisades atomic reactor in Michigan (see photo, left). On Thursday, April 9th Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps will testify at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) annual performance review at Palisades. The formal meeting begins at 6pm Eastern time, with public comments at the end. A call-in number has been provided for those who would like to listen-in, or even speak out during the public comment session: Teleconference Bridge Number: 888-989-4611; Pass code: 9165034.

The over-exposure of 192 Palisades workers to, on average, 2.8 Rem radiation doses during the short, month-long Control Rod Drive Mechanism (CRDM) replacement project at Palisades will be a hot topic for discussion, as that "White Finding" (of supposedly "low to moderate" safety significance, according to NRC) has resulted in increased NRC regulatory oversight for the foreseeable future.

On Friday, April 10th, Beyond Nuclear's attorney at Palisades, Terry Lodge of Toledo, will also be filing yet another major legal brief in the ongoing environmental coalition legal intervention against any further weakening of safety standards regarding Palisades' RPV embrittlement. Palisades has the worst neutron-embrittled RPV in the U.S., at risk of meltdown and catastrophic radioactivity release due to pressurized thermal shock (PTS).

Beyond Nuclear's expert witness at Palisades, Arnie Gundersen, the Chief Engineer at Fairewinds Associates, Inc. in Burlington, Vermont, has prepared a short, humorous educational video about the most serious subject of RPV embrittlement and PTS risks, "Nuclear Crack Down?".

On April 19th, a fundraiser will be held in Kalamazoo, Michigan to support the intervention.

See Beyond Nuclear's media release for more details on activities around Palisades. (For an email version of this press release with functioning hot links, email kevin@beyondnuclear.org and he'll send you a copy.)

In its RPV embrittlement legal filings, Beyond Nuclear and Lodge have raised warnings emanating from Greenpeace Belgium, and the Belgian nuclear regulatory agency, about extensive micro-cracking discovered in two Belgian atomic reactors. Greenpeace Belgium issued a press release in mid-February about these dire warnings. Belgium's nuclear regulatory chief, and Greenpeace's expert witness, have called for worldwide testing of all atomic RPVs. Beyond Nuclear has joined their call for this in the U.S., beginning at Palisades.

But Palisades isn't the only reactor with CRDM or RPV penetration problems...

As reported in an NRC "Event Notification" on April 6th, the Braidwood Unit 1 atomic reactor in IL has an "indication" of degradation at a control rod drive mechanism on the reactor vessel closure lid.

On April 8th, another NRC Event Notification reported reactor pressure vessel closure lid degradation at the Shearon Harris atomic reactor in North Carolina.

Problems in proposed new reactors

Weak spots in the steel of the reactor vessel, and its closure lid, at the proposed new EPR ("European Pressurized Reactor") at Flamanville, France, have been found, the French nuclear regulatory agency ASN has reported.  The weak spots are due to a high concentration of carbon in the steel, which makes the vessels vulnerable to cracking.

Other EPR construction projects worldwide have been warned, such as the highly contentious one at Olkiluoto, Finland.

Both the Flamanville and Olkiluoto construction project were already in serious trouble due to major cost overruns and long schedule delays before this latest news. Areva, the EPR vessel manufacturer, was already in financial "meltdown" mode before this news, losing billions per year.

At one point, seven EPRs (the same design, but instead dubbed "Evolutionary Power Reactors" here, for some strange reason) were proposed to be built in the U.S. (and yet more in Canada, such as four at Darlington, Ontario), with the flagship at Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. But that proposal was stopped when the American partner, Constellation Nuclear of Baltimore, balked at the $880 million credit subsidy fee the Obama administration Office of Management and Budget, and Department of Energy, were requiring for a $7.5 billion federal loan guarantee. With the termination of Calvert Cliffs 3, the other EPRs proposed in North America were either outright canceled, or indefinitely postponed.

The Wall Street Journal has also reported on this EPR story.