BRATTLEBORO -- While Entergy has made significant repairs to Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant’s cooling towers, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission faulted it for not adequately documenting problems found in two fan cells necessary for emergencies.
"The violation is considered to be of very low safety significance because a plant safety function was not affected and all deficiencies were appropriately repaired or otherwise monitored," wrote Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the NRC, in an e-mail to the Reformer.
According to the NRC Inspection Report for the third quarter of 2009, Yankee technicians found eight "deficiencies" in each of the two cells, which will require repair work next spring.
Plant management was in the process of reviewing the problems and had planned to bundle them into one package and then enter them into the repair tracking system.
The NRC found this was an incorrect procedure because any of the 16 items could have gotten "lost" during the review process. Instead, the items should have been listed as individual issues and not as a bundle.
"In the short term, deficiencies might not be tracked to resolution, management attention or other independent reviews would not be appropriately applied," stated the report. "In the longer term and if something is missed because of the delay, the corrective action program is designed to identify and evaluate potential common cause issues, and not utilizing this process could
Entergy did not contest the NRC’s findings, wrote Rob Williams, spokesman for Vermont Yankee, in an e-mail to the media, and the 16 items have since been entered individually into the Vermont Yankee corrective action program.
"The deficiencies included such things as slightly degraded timbers or fasteners that were evaluated and did not need immediate repair but were to be replaced or re-examined in the next maintenance cycle," he wrote. "Those low priority items should have been formally entered into Vermont Yankee’s corrective action program in a more timely manner."
"They lost track of commitments they planned to make to correct items that they committed to fix," said Arnie Gundersen, a member of the Public Oversight Panel that oversaw a recent audit of reliability at the power plant.
But what is important to recognize, wrote Sheehan, is that Entergy performed an operability assessment which determined that the safety-related function of the cooling towers was always available.
"The cooling towers operated effectively and without incident during this year’s summer months," he stated.
Since one of the fan cells collapsed in August of 2007, Entergy has embarked upon a renovation program, replacing wood supports with fiberglass-reinforced supports, installing new support brackets and updating its corrective action procedures and documentation.
"We determined the overall program for modifying and inspecting the towers has been adequate," stated Sheehan.
Twenty of the cooling tower’s 22 fan cells are not considered safety related.
The non-safety function of the cooling towers is to reduce the temperature of the water used to cool the plant before it is returned to the Connecticut River.
Cell 2-1 is considered a safety-related cell because it would be called upon to cool the plant in the event the normal cooling system had failed.
Cell 2-2, which is adjacent to cell 2-1, is not safety related, but it is "structurally robust" and designed to protect cell 2-1 if the other fan cells were to collapse due to an earthquake or a hurricane.
The oversight panel insisted that all 22 fan cells of the cooling towers should be considered safety related, wrote Gundersen.
That’s because the cooling tower basin, which holds water beneath the cooling towers, could become clogged with debris if the tower collapsed, he wrote, reducing the ability of the safety-related cell to cool the plant.
Bob Audette can be reached at raudette@reformer.com, or at 802-254-2311, ext. 273.
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