http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/DAILY/psr.htm

Catawba 2 - still out from trip 0n 12-30-99.

Oconee 3 - Hot Standby. Reactor trip on 1-3-2000.

South Texas 2 - 93% power reduction to repair hydrogen leak on main generator.

Oconee 2 and South Texas 2 are new reports from this morning. Are these type of probs historically typical of the industry, or could they be "non-y2k events" ?

-- Lee Chesson (Lchesson@bigfoot.com), January 04, 2000

Answers

Lee, such outages are common. The local reactor at Shearon Harris near Raleigh has accidentally shut down about 4 times in the last year. Before that it had not shut down (accidentally) for several years.

-- Puddintame (achillesg@hotmail.com), January 04, 2000.

Lee,

I work at the Catawba plant and I know for a fact that the reactor trip there was not Y2K related. We didn't find the cause for a couple of days, even though the Secretary of Energy was saying on the 31st that our problem was "computer, but not Y2K related" (Huh?) It had nothing to do with any computer. It was a shorted cable on the electrical trip solenoid valve for the turbine. It was detected when the turbine was reset for troubleshooting and smoke was seen coming from the cable connector.

Oconee's failure is due to loss of stator cooling, again nothing to do with a computer. Nuclear plants, for the most part, are not as automated as the newer natural gas and fossil plants.

The South Texas problem would have nothing to do with a computer either. The only one that remains a mystery to me is the Vogtle plant trip. A "distributon" problem doesn't do much to explain to me why it tripped, but who knows.

John Cauthen

-- John Cauthen (johnr@cetlink.net), January 04, 2000.