Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant back online Attempt to go online Friday halted for repairs; NRC: event will count as an unplanned scram
ARTICLE | News | May 26, 2015 10:45 AM | By CapeCodToday Staff - See more at: http://www.capecodtoday.com/article/2015/05/26/224549-Pilgrim-Nuclear-Power-Plant-back-online#sthash.scMfG9el.dpuf
Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant is back online this week and functioning at 98 percent, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's most recent power reactor status report. Operators at the Entergy-owned plant in Plymouth attempted to bring the facility back online Friday and encounted [sic] an unplanned shutdown of the reactor.
"Friday morning, during the startup of the turbine generator, plant personnel identified an issue with the condenser (which converts steam from the turbine into water). Rather than proceeding with the startup, operators conservatively lowered power to 5% and shut down the plant manually," Entergy Senior Communication Specialist Lauren Burm said in an email Tuesday morning.
The plant was taken offline at the end of April for a planned refueling outage. "Nuclear power plants are baseload electricity generators designed to run at 100 percent, but they need to occasionally take a strategic timeout to refuel and kick the tires, so to speak," said NRC spokesperson Neil Sheehan in April. On Friday, plant operators were returning the plant to service when the operators manually scrammed (shut down) the reactor around 10 a.m., Sheehan said in an email Tuesday morning.
According to the NRC, a loss of condenser vacuum necessitated the shutdown. "The condenser uses bay water to cool down and condense back into water steam that has been generated by the reactor and used to spin the turbine," the NRC release said. The loss of condenser vacuum was caused by three separate issues: two condenser waterboxes had been isolated (taken out of service), a condensate pump minimum flow valve was stuck open and the plant's Augmented Off-Gas System was out of service. All three issues were rectified over the weekend, according to Sheehan.
On Sunday Pilgrim operators restarted the reactor. NRC's resident inspectors worked with plant operators over the weekend to ensure the issues that caused the Friday's shutdown were resolved.
In a release John Dent, Pilgrim's Site Vice President, called the 35-day planned shutdown "a great success." According to the release, Entergy invested $70 million in upgrading, replacing, overhauling and inspecting "hundreds of pieces of equipment that make the plant safer today than when it was built." The work was conducted by nearly 2,000 workers including 1,184 extra contract workers brought in specifically for the 2015 refueling outage. Post-Fukushima upgrades were also done as part of the planned maintenance, according to the release.
The unscheduled shutdown on Friday will count against Pilgrim's Performance Indicator for Unplanned Scrams per 7,000 Hours of Operation, Sheehan said.
"Friday morning, during the startup of the turbine generator, plant personnel identified an issue with the condenser (which converts steam from the turbine into water). Rather than proceeding with the startup, operators conservatively lowered power to 5% and shut down the plant manually," Entergy Senior Communication Specialist Lauren Burm said in an email Tuesday morning.
The plant was taken offline at the end of April for a planned refueling outage. "Nuclear power plants are baseload electricity generators designed to run at 100 percent, but they need to occasionally take a strategic timeout to refuel and kick the tires, so to speak," said NRC spokesperson Neil Sheehan in April. On Friday, plant operators were returning the plant to service when the operators manually scrammed (shut down) the reactor around 10 a.m., Sheehan said in an email Tuesday morning.
According to the NRC, a loss of condenser vacuum necessitated the shutdown. "The condenser uses bay water to cool down and condense back into water steam that has been generated by the reactor and used to spin the turbine," the NRC release said. The loss of condenser vacuum was caused by three separate issues: two condenser waterboxes had been isolated (taken out of service), a condensate pump minimum flow valve was stuck open and the plant's Augmented Off-Gas System was out of service. All three issues were rectified over the weekend, according to Sheehan.
On Sunday Pilgrim operators restarted the reactor. NRC's resident inspectors worked with plant operators over the weekend to ensure the issues that caused the Friday's shutdown were resolved.
In a release John Dent, Pilgrim's Site Vice President, called the 35-day planned shutdown "a great success." According to the release, Entergy invested $70 million in upgrading, replacing, overhauling and inspecting "hundreds of pieces of equipment that make the plant safer today than when it was built." The work was conducted by nearly 2,000 workers including 1,184 extra contract workers brought in specifically for the 2015 refueling outage. Post-Fukushima upgrades were also done as part of the planned maintenance, according to the release.
The unscheduled shutdown on Friday will count against Pilgrim's Performance Indicator for Unplanned Scrams per 7,000 Hours of Operation, Sheehan said.
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