Several weeks ago the CP&L nuclear plant south of Raleigh shut down automatically reportedly because of worker error during testing. No mention of y2k. Two nights ago, I saw the end of a local news blip mentioning two minor problems at the plant.

Can anyone tell me who I would contact to get the official analysis of these events? How long will it take to get an official incident report? Please try to give me another option in addition to just calling the utility company. They never return my calls. Any help appreciated.

If the results are relevant to this forum I will let you know.

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), March 12, 1999

Answers

You can get verification through the NRC web-site. If you post the date we can find the weekly incident report (or daily) that will have the actual report to the NRC. They must report these incident to the NRC as part of their license requirements.

-- ~~~~ (~~~~@~.~), March 12, 1999.

Forgot to mention that we also need the actual name of the plant.

-- ~~~~~ (~~~~@~.~), March 12, 1999.

Puddintame, more specific info is necessary, as was already requested. However, I have read all the daily "event" reports on the NRC site for the last four months and can't recall seeing anything in the nature of what you mention. There were a very few days in which the links to the reports were "write-protected" and unavailable, though. If you know even the week in which the events should have occurred, that will help a lot.

-- Bonnie Camp (bonniec@mail.odyssey.net), March 12, 1999.

Bonnie and tilde~, thanks for the response. See this pasted thread from January:

On 1-16-99 the Raleigh News & Observer reported that the 860 megawatt Shearon Harris nuclear generation plant automatically shut down on the morning of 1-14-99 after two technicians cut power to two of the three cooling pumps. Fortunately, the control rods "dropped automatically into the reactor core and the plant went dead." Carolina Power & Light's explanation according to the journalist: "...two workers put a piece of paper as required inside power equipment they were testing to block contact and forgot to remove the paper when they were done." The N&O journalist wrote: "CP&L would not divulge what, if anything, it's spending on replacement power from other power companies until Harris is operating at full capacity again early next week." According to the article the last automatic shutdown at the plant was in 1995. My personal feelings, I'm so thankful that they waited 48 hours to report this. Any earlier and I would have panicked! Thank you, Sir, May I have another!?

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), January 16, 1999 The TV news reports in which I heard snippets were broadcast on the evening of March 10 I believe. I can't confirm that because I only heard about 2 seconds of the end of the report.

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), March 12, 1999.

If it's an "operator error" from this kind of mistake - especially one that was not caught by their inspectors or supervisors - that trips off a plant like this, I'd expect in two-three months the NRC is going to be a little bit richer and the power plant a little bit poorer.

I'm not going to guess the penalty amount - it will depend on previous history, etc. In adition to the lost power from the shutdown ($50,000 - $100,000) and the extra overhead in correcting and writing up the problem, they'd get something between $10,000 - $100,000 in fines.

You probably should write the plant itself - the local paper might not even carry the story, the investigation results, or the results, because it isn't "exciting" news about movie stars.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), March 12, 1999.

So many 'operator errors' and we are supposed to believe that the industry is capable of manual operations....

-- Shelia (shelia@active-stream.com), March 12, 1999.

<>>

No - we are supposed to believe the following:

So many 'operator errors' (from the workers in the highly trained and regulated nuclear ower plants) and we are supposed to believe that the (rest of the industries and utilities across the world - with little training, no qualifications, no manuals, no drills, no engineerig departmetn backups, no safe guards, no y2K preparations, and no outside inspectors are) capable of manual operations....

Fix on failure anyone? How?

If "fix on failure" worked, why not do it now?

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), March 14, 1999.