NEW YORK, Oct 30 (Scott DiSavino) - Hurricane Sandy slowed or shut a
half-dozen U.S. nuclear power plants, while the nation's oldest
facility declared a rare "alert" after the record storm surge pushed
flood waters high enough to endanger a key cooling system.
Exelon Corp's 43-year-old New Jersey Oyster Creek plant remains on
"alert" status, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said
early Tuesday. It is only the third time this year that the
second-lowest of four emergency action levels was triggered.
The alert came after water levels at the plant rose by more than 6.5
feet (2 meters) above normal, potentially affecting the "water intake
structure" that pumps cooling water through the plant, an NRC
spokesman said.
Those pumps are not essential since the reactor has been shut for
planned refuelling since Oct. 22. However, a further rise to 7 feet
could submerge the service water pump motor that is used to cool the
water in the spent fuel pool, potentially forcing it to use emergency
water supplies from the in-house fire suppression system to keep the
rods from overheating.
On Tuesday, an NRC spokesman said the levels reached a peak of 7.4
feet -- apparently above the threshold. As of 6:10 a.m. EDT waters
were at 6.5 feet, with the next high tide at 11:45 a.m. He said the
company had moved a portable pump to the water intake structure as a
precaution, but has not needed to use it.
Exelon said in a statement that there was no danger to equipment and
no threat to public health or safety.
"Right now there's no imminent threat of releases. There's no
protective actions around the plant," Federal Emergency Management
Agency Administrator Craig Fugate said on the Today Show.
"Some of these reporting requirements are due though to the severity
of the storms. That they have to make these notifications based upon
conditions, that does not mean that they are in an imminent threat at
the plant," Fugate said.
The incident at Oyster Creek, which is about 60 miles (95 km) east of
Philadelphia on the New Jersey Coast, came as Sandy made landfall as
the largest Atlantic storm ever, bringing up to 90 mile per hour (mph)
winds and 13-foot storm surges in the biggest test of the industry's
emergency preparedness since the Fukushima disaster in Japan a year
and a half ago.
Despite the alert -- which is a serious but not catastrophic event
that signals a "potential substantial degradation in the level of
safety" -- the U.S. nuclear industry was broadly seen having passed
the test. About a dozen alerts have been issued in the past four
years, according to NRC press releases.
On Tuesday morning, the NRC said that Entergy Corp's Indian Point 3
automatically tripped offline at about 10:41 p.m. last night due to
fluctuations in the power grid caused by the storm, while Public
Service Enterprise Group Inc's Salem Unit 1 was manually shut down at
1:10 a.m. due to a loss of "condenser circulators" due to the storm
surge and debris.
SPENT FUEL
The relatively small 636-megawatt (MW) Oyster Creek plant earlier
experienced a "power disruption" at its switch yard, causing two
backup diesel generators to kick in and maintain a stable source of
power, Exelon said.
The NRC spokesman said the company could use water from a fire
suppression system to cool the pool if necessary. The used uranium
rods in the pool could cause the water to boil in about 25 hours
without additional coolant; in an extreme scenario the rods could
overheat, risking the eventual release of radiation.
The concerns over the status of the spent fuel pool at Oyster Creek
was reminiscent of the fears that followed the Fukushima disaster last
year, when helicopters and fire hoses were enlisted to ensure the
pools remained filled with fresh, cool water. The nuclear industry has
said that the spent fuel rods at Fukushima were never exposed to the
air.
Nuclear plants must store the spent uranium fuel rods for at least
five years in order to cool them sufficiently before they can be moved
to dry cask storage containers.
Exelon spokesman David Tillman said Monday night the plant has
"multiple and redundant" sources of cooling for the spent fuel pool.
He said he did not know whether the service water system was
operational last night.
The plant uses pumps to take in external water that circulates through
a heat exchanger used to cool the internal water that surrounds the
rods, keeping them from overheating.
Among other units, Constellation Energy Nuclear Group's 630-MW Nine
Mile Point 1 nuclear power reactor in upstate New York did shut due to
a problem putting power onto the grid, although it was not clear
whether the trouble was related to the storm.
In addition, Sandy caused power reductions at both units at Exelon's
Limerick nuclear plant in Pennsylvania and one unit at Dominion's
Millstone plant in Connecticut.
