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Local
Companies | Article published December 24, 2002
Davis-Besse whittles down list of safety
issues
By TOM HENRY
BLADE STAFF
WRITER
LISLE, Ill. - Davis-Besse has 26 "potentially
safety-significant issues" to address before the nuclear plant is
fully prepared to handle any worst-case scenario that might arise,
FirstEnergy Corp. officials said yesterday.
While that might
seem like a lot, the company pointed out that 1,200 items were
initially brought to its attention for consideration. Company
officials left a meeting here with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
yesterday on a positive note by claiming most of the remaining work
appears to be engineering calculations for accidents.
Nothing
found so far has thrown the company off course for its projected
spring restart.
"The key is we haven’t found anything yet
that makes us think we’re going to have to go out and redesign a
system," said Lew Myers, chief operating officer of FirstEnergy’s
nuclear subsidiary.
The NRC’s oversight panel called the
meeting to hear the company present its review of the status of
Davis-Besse’s plant safety systems, a broad-ranging effort that has
involved numerous government and industry officials during the
plant’s extended outage.
Davis-Besse was taken out of service
Feb. 16 for what was supposed to be a month-long refueling, but has
remained closed since the nation’s worst reactor-head corrosion
problem was discovered in early March.
Jack Grobe, NRC
oversight panel chairman, said the review was intended to evaluate
how fit Davis-Besse is for averting accidents based on design
modifications and other work that has occurred at the plant
throughout its 25-year history.
Mr. Grobe said it was
impossible for the NRC to give its assessment until it finds out
details of all 26 open issues. "I don’t understand how we can put
full context into what you’ve done to date without these answers,"
he told company officials.
The utility said it plans to
provide the rest of the requested information by the end of January,
after it finishes its so-called "safety function validation
project."
Topics such as the plant’s vulnerability to cooling
line breaks, earthquakes, fire, flooding, and temperature
fluctuations have been studied.
In one scenario, FirstEnergy
has been studying how Davis-Besse’s equipment might perform on the
off-chance that an earthquake and nuclear accident occurred at the
same moment, cutting off the plant’s ability to draw cooling water
from Lake Erie. That would force it to recirculate warm water inside
the plant, instead of using cooler lake water.
"We do believe
we have a design calculation to cover that," said Bob Schrauder,
FirstEnergy director of support services.
In another
scenario, the company is looking at the effects on equipment if the
plant experienced an on-site loss of power and emergency diesel
generators had to be used during a summer heat wave, Mr. Schrauder
said.
Mr. Myers and Gary Leidich, executive vice president,
said they have seen nothing that will further delay the company’s
plans for a restart.
Those plans call for a nonnuclear
pressure test in mid-February to see if the bottom of the reactor is
leaking. The test is being conducted because rust stains were found
on the reactor bottom in June. Company officials believe - but are
not certain - those stains are the result of cleaning work at the
top of the reactor that just ran down the sides.
In the
nonnuclear pressure test, nuclear fuel will be loaded into the
reactor and the plant will be operated as normal, except that
control rods will be fully inserted to absorb neutrons and keep the
nuclear fission process from occurring.
The corrosion on the
top of the reactor head is unprecedented. Leaking boric acid burned
through all six inches of carbon steel on the reactor head, but a
thin liner of stainless steel liner prevented the possibility of a
major nuclear accident in northwest Ohio.
Mr. Myers said the
discovery embarrassed the company, but he added that the "overall
material condition of the [rest of] the plant is quite
good."
He said he believes the fact that 1,200 items were
brought up during the safety review is indicative of advancements in
nuclear engineering over the last 25 years - not of Davis-Besse’s
maintenance problems.
"When Davis-Besse was designed, we all
had slide rules," he said. We’ve come a long way."
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