ML18228A198
| ML18228A198 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Turkey Point  |
| Issue date: | 03/14/1976 |
| From: | Miami Herald |
| To: | Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation |
| References | |
| Download: ML18228A198 (1) | |
Text
Kjie JHIami gfzrujh 14-A Sunday, March 14, 1976 s
"The leaks are undesirable, aud >ye IyfjulfI like to get rid of them, but they are no safety hazard. The pits are not going to collapse, and they are not going to fall apart."
1'PL'6 A. D. Schmidt I
FPJL, V.S. AgefffjeyAXefOII'eef 'I'm Ij'ey I'OffffIEIeek8 FROM-PAGE I to wait until all of the fuel can be unloaded and the pits drained-somethlng that may not be possible for several years.
In the
- meantime, FPL actually plans to expand the storage capacity of the leaking pits even though ii may not be able to repair the leaks themselves.
ORDINARILY, the used fuel would be stored in the pits for oniy a few months before being trucked away to one of the nation's three commercial reprocessing facilities.
<<Jv"j".'jP'f I
9 Ii T)JE AMOUNT of radioactive co-halt released, however, was approx-imately 15 times the amount re-leased from the plant in ail of the first six months of 1975
'fo prevent a repeat of the mis-hap, FPL decided to label the drains in the floor of the plant, and it or-dered workers to "request guidance f r o m knowledgeable personnel whenever any uncertainty arises over the handling of radioactive material "
Schmidt says the employes re-sponsible for the accident were "disciplined," but not fired.
And he says that in spite of the
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"ln terms of Ihe im-Iuinrnt Ihreat Io the public, the risk of these leaks i9 rather small.
'Brit Ilte long-term risks are milch greater.
'I ilese ltaks are not luSI a pofcnil:Il pk'011 ~
lem, Ikey are happen.-
'ing right now."
RofirrfPoffnrd, flnfon of Concerned Sc'ign tiers
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.But the reprocessing plant rt West Valley, N.Y., has been closed since 1972 for safety modifications arid icon't be reopened until at least J979.
',.A second plant, near Morris, Ill.,
niay never open at all. Its builders say the rew 564-million plant sim-p'iv does not work.
.The country's third reprocessing
- pant, at
- Barmvell, S C.,
is em-J.roiled in a licensing dispute and Jcn't expected to open until 1977 or J 976.'s a result, FPL like most of ISe nation's other nuclear power plant operators is heine forced io ctoie us spent fuel at the plant iviiere it is used.
1i IA w
a Y2 r
z
<<2
... spent rnnferial goes info separate pits schich are cooered uifh ua fer tank, which must be periodically cleaned.
In
- October, plant maintenance men cleaned out the tank and stored its radioactive mixture of sludge and water in a number of 55-gallon drums.
creased greatly a process that takes hours.
But the reliability of the pumps will become increasingly important as FPL increases the amount of fuel it holds in the pits. More fuel will mean more heat.
reactor where there is spare stor-age.
By themselves, the leaks do not yet pose any serious safety hazard.
mpany recovered about 60 per nt of it. The rest of it nearly 3
0 galions ran out a doorway a d soaked into the ground outside.
" hat is a potentially very serious accident," says Dr. Henry Kendall, a nuclear physicist at the Massa-chusetts Institute of Technology and member of the UCS.
"Without the pumps for any ex-tended period of time, or without adequate cooling water, the spent fiiel would begin to overheat," Ken-dall explains.
"In time, the fuel rods would rup-ture and at that point, if the fuel pits still leaked, anything that came out the cracks would probably glow in the dark."
BUT THEY DO exemplify a num-ber of general problems in the na-tion's nuclear industry including defects in plant construction, the failure to correct knoivn
- defects, and a range of problems posed by the increasing storage of spent fuel at scattered locations around the country.
FPL, which has made a
heavy commitment to construction of new nuclear power plants, is especially sensitive to the implications.
"Nuclear power ic <<J<<cnlutely i c-sential to the energy future of this countn'," said one company spokes-man. "I certainly don't believe that this story is going to help the cause of nuclear power one bit."
There is agreement on that point from Robert D, Pollard, a former li-censing project manager with the
- NRC, who resigned his post in January in protest over "unresolved safety problems" in nuclear plant construction.
"THAT WILL decrease t h e amount of time the company will have to deploy its emergency equip-ment," says Moseley. "Ifthey triple the amount of fuel stored there, it will give them roughly one-third of the time they now have." As a pre-caution, FPL plans to install perma-nent back-up pumps on the fuel pits a decision the company made shortly after a mishap with one of iic remi orary emergency pumps re-sulted m
the spill of more than 7,000 gallons of radioactive water.
The sequence of events began on April 12, 1975i. The pump on one of.
the spent fuel pits failed for what was to be the first of three failures in the next five weeks. An emergency pump was moved in and ON OCT 21, afmr the sludge had settled in the drums, the worl men were told to pump the liquid into another holding area through one of the drains in the floor of the plant.
Twenty of the drunis were emptied before the men discovered that they had been emptied into the wrong drain. Instead of going into a holding area, the liquid simply had run into a storm drain and soaked into the ground outsiu'e.
"The inadvertent use of the wrong floor drain resulted in an un-planned release of about 660 gal-lons of radioactive liquid to the un-derground outside the plant's radia-tion-controlled boundary,"
Schmidt told federai authorities in his report AETER TJIE April spill, FPL took a number of precautions to assure that such an accident ivould not be repeated.
In the four subsequent failures of its fuel pit pismps, in fact, there were no report.ed spills of radiation.
Th h
p'll f
PUT THE storage pits at Turkey poi,.t are nearin
- capacity, and the company is urgently seeking federal approval for a
$4-million program to triple ihe amount of fuel the 1 aking pits will hold. Without ade-quate
- storage, the plant could be forced to close.
'ven with the expansion, howev-er, the fuel already stored there will hpve to remain in place, and the company is uncertain it will be able to fix the leaks until it can be re-moved.
Company officials say they aren' ivorried about
'the continued leak-age.
r"'The leaks are undesirable, and ivre would like to get rid of them, Jibt they are no safety hazard,"
<<sys A.D. Schmidt, FPL's vice pres-ident for power resources.
, "The pits are not going to col-
- lapse, and they arc not going to fall apart."
~ But because the rate of leakage appears to be increasing, Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials are more concerned about the prob-lem.
"IN TERMS of the imminent threat to the public, the risk of these leaks is rather small,"
ex-plained Pollard, who now works for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group of Boston-based scientists critical of the nuclear industry.
"But the long-term risks are much greater,"
he added.
"These leaks are not just a potential prob-lem, they are happening right now.
"The company is caught in the equivalent of a
Catch 22.
They didn't fix the leaks when they had the chance, and now that the leaks are apparently getting worse, they have so much spent fuel on hand that they can't fix them.
"Ifit weren't such a serious mat-ter, it would border on the absurd."
The leaks, however, are not the only problems that FPL has been having v:ith the storage of spert fueL "LEAKS DO not heal them-
<<elves,"
says Norman C. Moseley, director of inspection and enforce-ment for the NRC's Southeast re-hdon.
.'Turkey Point has not yet re-nived permission to store addition-al fuel at its plant, and it is possible
@at we might require them to re-r.ir th>> leak before they get that approval," he said.
'Repair efforts may be hampered hy the storage of spent fuel, but ihe company could be required to un!oad the fuel to make any necces-
. Iry repairs.
- "In that case, they ivould have to sliip the spent fuel to some other place perhaps to their new St.
J.ucie poiver plant, or to some other BECAUSE THE fuel is hot, the water in the pits must be circulated to prevent the buildup of heat-and the possibility that the big pools of water could eventually begin boiling.
Each pit has only a single pump to circulate the water. One of them has failed twice in the last year.
The other has failed three times.
"That is a high failure rate," says Moseley.
Each time a pump has failed so far, the company either has been able to repair it, or bring in emer-gency equipment before the heat in-Pool-Like Area Inside Turke Poigt Plant Contains nuclear Fuel "The company i9 caught in the c'quiya-1ent of a
Catch 22.
Tike) di(ln'I fix the leaks Itdlen they had I lie cllance anil OQIY flint the leaks are ap-parenily geiting worse, they have so much 1'uel on hand that they can'I fix them. If it weren' sucll a serious nlaffez' r'I cc<<arrl<<l liosxlor on Ihe absurd."
Roheri PoVard, Unfon of Concerned Srienrh<<rs
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growing list of problems associated with the storage of spent fuel at Turkey Point. there is no cause for public concern.
"TJJERE IS really no consider-able hazard in
<<hat we have there," he says. "I don't like leakin" fuel pits, and I <<could like to get rid of the fuel, but those things don' represent a real hazard Kendall save the outlook is less positive.
"Some of these things could be very
. emouc,"
he says. "Ther.
are problemc v, ith a number of cyst ms that are interrelated.
"Jt is a failure of the regulatory process that the leaks v;ere actual-ly detected and not repaired, and because it is now apparent that the I Ui t