* updated below *
The Vermont Yankee nuclear power station began an unscheduled shutdown Sunday night after engineers found a new leak in a key system pipe at the Vernon reactor.
The plant shutdown began at roughly 7 p.m., said Entergy Vermont Yankee spokesman Larry Smith, after plant operators has earlier identified leakage of approximately 60 drops per minute from a feedwater pipe located in the plant’s turbine building.
Technicians and engineers later located the leak in the feedwater system piping.
VY previously repaired a leak in a feedwater pipe in August 2009. That one leaked about two cups per minute.
“The leak is in a 24-inch pipe located by the feed water pumps in the plant’s turbine building,” Smith told Seven Days. The feed water system is not a safety system, Smith notes. It returns water to the reactor from the plant’s turbines — but at high pressure and high temperatures.
The leaking pipe is 24 inches in diameter and cannot be repaired with the plant in operation, Smith said. Therefore, a conservative decision was made to take the plant out of service to perform a repair.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) Resident Inspector has been informed of the issue and of the plan to remove the station from service. The plant had been operating at reduced power for a scheduled rod pattern adjustment and to support line work by Public Service Company of New Hampshire. The plant had been on line for 163 days of continuous operation, Smith added.
Regional NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan told Seven Days that the senior resident inspector was on his way to VY to observe the plant shutdown.
“The leakage is on a feedwater line downstream of the reactor. It is considered non-safety related,” Sheehan said.
The new leak comes at an inopportune time for Vermont Yankee’s owner Entergy. The company announced last week it was trying to put the reactor up for sale. The reactor’s license expires in 2012 and some VY critics see the sale as a last-ditch attempt to keep the plant operating beyond its scheduled operating date.
Entergy has lost the trust of many in Vermont, as well as some key political leaders — including Governor-elect Peter Shumlin, the Democrat who led the charge earlier this year to force a vote in the state Senate on VY’s future. By a 26-4 vote, Senators decided that it was not in the best interest of the state to allow Vermont Yankee to continue operating beyond 2012.
The news also comes just two weeks after another leak was discovered. That leak, in a safety-related pipe, was not serious enough to warrant a shutdown. It had been found in late September, but was only made public in late October after members of the media made inquiries.
Earlier in October, the Vermont Department of Health revealed that tritium had been found in an on-site drinking water well. Previously, tritium had only been found in groundwater.
* update – Monday 8 p.m. *
Vermont Yankee officials have found, and isolated, the source of the leak in the 24-inch water pipe that caused the plant to shut down.
“Repair work to a leak on a 24 inch feed water pipe is scheduled to begin this evening. The leak, which was identified late Saturday by plant operators, was found to be coming from a two-inch access plug in the pipe located in the feed pump room of the plant,” said VY spokesman Larry Smith in an email to media.
The access plug was used for radiography of pipe welds during original construction of the plant. Technicians will replace the seal weld with a more substantial fillet weld to the plug. Repairs will take approximately 24 hours to complete at which time the plant will be restarted, noted Smith.
A similar plug was the source of a leak in the feedwater system in early 2009. The feedwater system carries slighty radioactive water in a closed-loop system between the turbines and the plant’s reactor. Water travels through at very high temperature and pressure.
The faulty plug is approximately a half-inch in size inside a two-inch port, added Neil Sheehan, a regional NRC spokesman. Both the port and the plug are welded into the piping.
“Workers had to remove insulation wrapped around the line to get at this. What initially appeared to be a roughly three-inch flaw was actually this port, or opening,” said Sheehan.
This article appears in Nov 3-9, 2010.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
“It was not partisan. Republicans and Democrats voted to retire VY as scheduled.”That’s a good one! The Senate consisted at the time of 23 Dems and 7 Repubs.The fact that 3 Repubs crossed over under pressure from the Pro Tem hardly makes it a “non-partisan” vote. If a few Dems had gone the other way, I might agree with you that it was non-partisan. But that’s not what happened.And the vote would never have taken place at all if gubernatorial wannabe Shumlin hadn’t raised the issue and forced the vote because he wanted to run for Gov. That ain’t representative democracy. It was crass power politics. You seem to forget that, as part of our representative democracy, we have this independent body called the PSB that has both the jurisdiction, and the expertise, to decide these matters. Your elected legislators created it and gave it the very authority you now don’t want it to have.And, by the way, based on your last sentence, are you advocating for putting a brand new plant on that site? I’m with ya on that. Or are you just including that remark to look reasonable? Please tell us.
Gee, howbout you try to step outside your own biased mindset just for one teensy weensy second and consider the possibility that maybe you aren’t 100%, infallibly correct and that rational people might legitimately have a very different opinion from yours on VY?right back at ya Webber.It was not partisan. Republicans and Democrats voted to retire VY as scheduled.Its not one chamber or just 26 people. Its 26 people that represent more than 90% of Vermont’s population and which by the way were re-elected by those people. Only one Senator that voted to retire the aging plant and stood for re-election was defeated on November 2nd.If you don’t like the values that our representative democracy stands for I suggest you move to China. I’m sure you are one of the first people to always argue about what our founding fathers wanted and all, blah, blah blah… You do recognize that the government structure you just belittled is the exact one our founding fathers had so much faith in? Right?Mr. Obrien had a Christmas dinner at his home with Entergy officials. So I think there is a little more evidence that he is working for Entergy then you care to admit to.And lastly Mr. Webber, please just stop confusing the belief that closing VY is the right thing to do with being anti-Nuke. If you can’t see a difference between a plant that has a leak a day and new plant you are a bigger idiot than you even appear to be.
“O’Brien walks and talks like he’s employed by Entergy.”Gee, could that be because you have a particular point of view, cast in stone and unchangeable, and anything that doesn’t conform to it means that everyone else — including engineers, scientists, and 650 employees — is wrong and biased?Gee, is anyone who contradicts your opinion “employed by Entergy”?Gee, should I conclude that because you’re a critic of VY that “you walk and talk like you’re employed by VPIRG”?Gee, howbout you try to step outside your own biased mindset just for one teensy weensy second and consider the possibility that maybe you aren’t 100%, infallibly correct and that rational people might legitimately have a very different opinion from yours on VY?
Spin it any way you want it, Mr. Webber. O’Brien walks and talks like he’s employed by Entergy. Entergy. A leak a day. That’s all we ask.
“The people of Vermont, through their representatives have said they don’t want Yankee relicensed.”Um, not really. Only one chamber actually voted. The small one. The less representative one, actually. The vote was 26 to 4. So out of 650,000 citizens, 26 people voted not to relicense. Wow! A landslide! A mandate!Second, I would reiterate that O’Brien’s job is to do what’s in the best interest of the state, not what 26 partisan political hacks want. That vote was manufactured specifically for Sen. Shumlin’s future gubernatorial campaign. Period. If I were O’Brien, I wouldn’t consider that vote as indicative of anything.
The people of Vermont, through their representatives have said they don’t want Yankee relicensed. Mr. O’Brien needs to get with the program.
Seems to me he works for the people of Vermont, not the anti-nuke hysterics.
I propose the O’Brien. It is a measurement, named after the Vermont Chairman of the Dept. of Public Service. He seems to be their biggest defender on WCAX-TV. Who does he work for again?
I haven’t dug back through the archive to check this, but your article lists two different measurements for leaks. The latest is evidently measured in drops, the last was measured in cups? Every time there’s a leak do we get a new measurement type? Have we been through teaspoons and tablespoons yet?
“This house has quite a long and colorful history. It was built on an ancient Indian burial ground, and was the setting of Satanic rituals, witch-burnings, and five John Denver Christmas specials. “-Montgomery Burns.