{"id":3958,"date":"2013-06-09T10:31:35","date_gmt":"2013-06-09T14:31:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=3958"},"modified":"2013-06-09T10:51:11","modified_gmt":"2013-06-09T14:51:11","slug":"harris-nuke-flaw-fixed-that-wasnt-found-for-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/harris-nuke-flaw-fixed-that-wasnt-found-for-a-year.html","title":{"rendered":"Harris nuke flaw “fixed” that wasn’t found for a year"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nLess than 500 miles from here in NC,\r\nwhat else haven’t they found if\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n‘Duke Energy’s examination a year ago “was supposed to have found that problem then and fixed it”‘?\r\nThis was a ‘a quarter-inch spot the NRC and the company describe as a “flaw” in the reactor vessel head, which contains heat and pressure produced by the nuclear core’s energy.’\r\nWhen a solar panel has a quarter-inch flaw, you get a tiny percentage less electricity,\r\nnot the risk of radiation leak or worse.\r\nWould you rather have two more nukes at the same site, run by the same company that can’t run the one it’s got safely, or solar power instead?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nPlus where is the advantage of baseload capacity when\r\nHarris 1 has only been up 27.41% for the past month\r\n(NRC data<\/a>),\r\nwhich is hardly better than\r\nthe approximately 20% sun hours per day<\/a>\r\nfor solar power in North Carolina this time of year.\r\nGiven the low and continually-dropping cost of solar panels,\r\nDuke could simply over-provision distributed\r\nsolar panels and get way more than\r\n20% or 27.41% effective power, and get that on budget and on time.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"Harris<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nEmery P. Dalesio wrote for AP yesterday,\r\n\r\nHarris nuclear plant in U.S. is safe to restart after reactor problem found<\/a>,\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nThe Charlotte-based company’s Duke Energy Progress subsidiary last\r\nmonth was preparing for a plant shutdown and refuelling when\r\noperators reviewing ultrasonic tests done during last year’s\r\nrefuelling found a problem. There was a quarter-inch spot the NRC\r\nand the company describe as a “flaw” in the reactor vessel head,\r\nwhich contains heat and pressure produced by the nuclear core’s\r\nenergy.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe tiny flaw had not broken through the containment shell and there\r\nwas no evidence of radiation leakage, the company and regulators\r\nsaid. A public meeting summarizing what else a special inspection\r\nteam found during more than two weeks looking into the problem at\r\nHarris — and why finding the spot was delayed for a year\r\n— is scheduled for Thursday. A final report is expected next\r\nmonth.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nThat will be an interesting meeting and an interesting report.\r\nMeanwhile, Duke\r\n\r\nis still proposing to build two more reactors at the same site<\/a>.\r\nThey don’t seem to know how to operate the one they’ve got.\r\nBack to the AP story:\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nDuke Energy’s examination a year ago “was supposed to have found\r\nthat problem then and fixed it,” said Dave Lochbaum, who directs the\r\n\r\nnuclear safety project at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It\r\ndidn’t work that way. So one of the questions the NRC team will be\r\nanswering is, why was it missed back then? … Somehow that system\r\nbroke down.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nNuclear plants and the operations in place to run them safely are\r\ndesigned with backups and safeguards, so it’s unlikely someone had a\r\nbad day and simply overlooked the spot, Lochbaum said. Were the test\r\nresults not clear enough?, he wonders. Did the process of reading\r\nthe findings somehow fail? Was this an isolated case or something\r\nmore worth alerting operators of the rest of the country’s 100-plus\r\nnuclear reactors?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“The detection that was available last year wasn’t fully appreciated\r\nuntil this year. That’s not how the system is supposed to work,”\r\nLochbaum said.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nDuke Energy said last week it fixed the problem detected on the\r\nunderside of the top of the four-story reactor vessel that houses\r\nthe nuclear chain reaction.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nIt’s a fix applied at more than a dozen commercial reactors around\r\nthe country since the recurring problem was first discovered more\r\nthan a decade ago, Lochbaum said.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n“This comes with the industry. It’s an operational risk of running a\r\nnuclear power plant,” said Phil Adams, a senior bond analyst at\r\nGimme Credit LLC, which provides investors with independent\r\ncorporate bond research. “You’re dealing with high pressures and\r\nsubstances which can be very corrosive, and therefore inspections\r\nneed to be very, very vigilant. So is it a big deal that you missed\r\nit on an inspection? Yeah, it is.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nIt’s the sort of operational risk that’s made centralized baseload nuclear\r\na bad investment<\/a>, now even worse with\r\n\r\nSan Onofre down for good, taking more than half a billion dollars with it<\/a>.\r\nHow many other “flaws” have there at Harris been to account for all these\r\ndowntimes in the past seven years?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"Harris<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAnd look at this:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nNuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors are promising to share what\r\nthey found when they inspected early signs of corrosion and cracking\r\ninside the reactor vessel’s covering.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\nThis is the same NRC that said, in response to questioning\r\nby Kendra Ulrich of Friends of the Earth, that it’s\r\n\r\n“never been a practice” to show licensee documents to the public<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nWhat do you think about that, public?\r\nWhen we know\r\n\r\nall of North Carolina can be powered with\r\na smart grid of solar, wind, hydro, and less natural gas than NC uses now<\/a>?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

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