11/27/02

Washington - The Davis-Besse nuclear power plant's shutdown is likely to stretch into February if not later, according to comments made at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission yesterday.

Despite recent FirstEnergy Corp. statements that the plant - idled since mid-February - could be running by January, executives of the Akron company told the NRC yesterday that they will not conduct a crucial test for leaks until late January or early February. If the test shows that more repairs are necessary, the restart would have to wait.

"If you find a new leaking penetration, to me that opens up a whole new can of worms," Brian Sheron, the NRC's associate director for licensing and technical analysis, said at a meeting to discuss plans for the latest test.

The NRC will not grant permission to restart the troubled plant until the test is complete.

"We're going to need to hear all the results of the test before we can determine whether the test was successful, and this is a key element in their being able to restart the plant," said Anthony Mendiola, a section chief in the NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. "Clearly it's another hoop they have to jump through."

The test is to determine whether there are leaks in any of the 52 tubes that carry instruments up through the base and into the reactor core. Rust stains found at the bottom of the reactor's container, known as the reactor vessel, indicate that one or more tubes might have been leaking.

But the stains might also merely be residue left by the problems found at the top of the vessel last winter and now being fixed, FirstEnergy officials say. Nickel-alloy nozzles at the top had leaked highly corrosive boric acid for years, and the problem went undetected while the corrosion ate a hole through the vessel's 6½-inch-thick lid. The nozzles guide the fuel rods for the nuclear reaction.

Workers found the hole in March, several weeks after the plant shut down for a mandatory inspection. Davis-Besse is installing a new lid.

To find out if any tubes at the bottom are leaking, FirstEnergy plans to bring the reactor up to its normal operating temperature and pressure. Although its uranium fuel will be reloaded for the test, no nuclear reaction will occur because the reactor's control rods will stay inserted in the core. The reactor's coolant-circulating pumps and the natural decay of its radioactive fuel will generate the heat and pressure.

After the test, the company will inspect the tubes and vessel bottom. It also wants to monitor the tubes with a camera during the test. "Our intention is to get a camera down there" so workers can see any leakage, Bob Schrauder, the company's director of support services, told the NRC.

But Schrauder told the regulators a moment later, "We haven't worked out the details. We don't even know if there is going to be a camera available."

If leaks were found in a single tube, repairs would take about a week, said Jon Hopkins, an NRC senior project manager. But FirstEnergy first would need NRC permission to make the repairs, a process that could take several weeks, he added.

Leaks at the bottom could also trigger more dramatic calls for action by the NRC for the entire industry to check reactor bottoms. The NRC has already demanded renewed vigilance as a result of Davis-Besse's damaged lid. FirstEnergy, which last year fought successfully to keep Davis-Besse operating when the NRC wanted it shut down for inspections, gave assurances yesterday that it will resolve the leak issue.

"It's obvious from the discussion here that we're going to as great a length as we can to make sure that we don't have any leakage here. . . . That's the bottom line," said Gary Leidich, executive vice president of FirstEnergy's nuclear operating division.

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