Third of Nuke Plants Have Had Long Shutdowns

Sep 20 - The News & Observer

One-third of the nation's nuclear reactors have been forced to shut down for a year or more because of safety concerns, according to a new study from the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nuclear watchdog group in Washington.

The shutdowns, which include two reactors in North Carolina operated by Progress Energy -- but not the one in Wake County -- took place during the past 27 years, since the partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania.

Both reactors owned by Progress Energy, formerly known as Carolina Power & Light, are at the Brunswick nuclear plant in Southport, south of Wilmington.

Keeping the plant out of commission for more than a year usually indicates serious problems that require extensive repairs.

The nuclear engineer who wrote the report, David Lochbaum, said the nuclear industry still hasn't fixed the underlying problem: lax compliance with safety laws by plant operators and management. He is also worried about the lukewarm response by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency that oversees nuclear safety.

The concerns raised in the report could help fuel nuclear opponents' fight as companies such as Progress Energy in Raleigh and Duke Energy in Charlotte lay plans to build the nation's first new nuclear reactors in more than two decades.

Of the 130 power reactors ever licensed, 41 were closed for at least a year, Lochbaum found. Ten were closed twice.

Lochbaum will appear in Pittsboro tonight to discuss another long-standing worry among nuclear critics: fire safety standards at the Shearon Harris nuclear plant in southwestern Wake County. Lochbaum and others allege that the plant has been in violation of federal standards for more than a decade, requiring Progress Energy to assign round-the-clock fire patrols to compensate for the defects.

Officials at Progress Energy and the NRC say the fire patrols, along with several other measures, adequately ensure safety at the plant. Progress Energy has been using the fire patrols since 2002 -- six people patrolling 24 hours a day, which costs the company about $500,000 a year.

The fire safety issue is linked to the fire-retardant properties of a safety wrapper used on electrical cables. The material, called Hemyc, failed lab tests under extreme heat conditions. However, Hemyc use poses no immediate danger to the plant or surrounding community, the NRC has concluded, in part because the conditions of the lab tests exceed those of a real fire.

Shearon Harris is the focus of critics' attention because Progress Energy announced plans in January to license new reactors at the site, and is likely to build the first reactor within a decade. Groups such as the N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network in Durham have called Shearon Harris one of the most dangerous nuclear plants in the nation.

Lochbaum will likely also discuss the topic of his report released Monday: unplanned outages, though Shearon Harris hasn't had an unplanned outage lasting a year and is not included in Lochbaum's study.

Coincidentally, Shearon Harris shut down unexpectedly Tuesday morning when the plant's generator short-circuited, the first unplanned outage in more than a year.

Company officials expect to have the plant operational again today, said spokeswoman Julie Hans. During the outage, the company also plans to fix a leaky valve in a cooling pump that would feed water to the reactor during an emergency.

The last unplanned outage at Shearon Harris took the plant off-line for 14 days last year. Nuclear plants are designed to shut down automatically under certain circumstances as a safety precaution. Most outages are quickly corrected and aren't considered dangerous.

The extended outages at the Brunswick reactors took place between 1992 and 1994.

Among the problems uncovered there, NRC inspectors found that 85 percent of the iron bolts supporting a wall were either fraudulently or improperly installed, according to the study by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

In some cases, the bolt heads were sawed off and welded to the steel frame like ornamental buttons to create the appearance that they would support the wall during an earthquake.

The NRC proposed fines totaling $495,000 for the fake bolts and other violations, said the report by the group of scientists. The report does not indicate the ultimate disposition.

Progress Energy spokesman Mike Hughes said the problems were corrected years ago and the Brunswick plant is safe.

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