The newspaper in Omaha has been doing what it can to reassure Nebraskans that the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant remains safely in cold shut-down and under control, even though the facility now sits in the Missouri River, twenty miles upstream from the city. In a story this week, the paper identified "a few good cards to draw from" for public safety, during the flood danger at the plant because of improvements made since an aggressive Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspection in June 2009.
Here is part of how the paper explained the Fort Calhoun improvements:
An aggressive federal inspection of Fort Calhoun in June 2009.
That inspection uncovered problems with OPPD's flood preparedness.
As a result, the utility was required to modernize its flood-fighting arsenal, including better and easier-to-install watertight doors and barriers, additional pumps and sandbagging equipment.
» Discovery of erroneous flood calculations.
NRC review uncovered a mistake in calculating the level of catastrophic flooding that could occur, an error that OPPD has acknowledged.
According to the NRC review, OPPD was prepared for flooding up to a level of 1,009 feet above sea level — five feet below what the NRC required. Additionally, the federal agency said, OPPD's plans for protecting the plant to the required 1,014 feet were flawed and subject to failure.
An NRC risk analysis released last year determined that under OPPD's now-discarded plans, flooding above 1,010 feet would have led to a 100 percent chance of a fuel damage if the emergency gasoline pumps didn't work.
Let me get this straight. As of June, 2009, just two wee years ago, Omaha Power had prepared Fort Calhoun for a flood only up to 1009 feet. To put some perspective on that number, the same newspaper article states that now, after Omaha Power made the NRC required improvements:
The buildings themselves and associated pumps and electrical equipment are designed to handle flooding up to 1,014 feet above sea level. The river is a little over 1,006 feet now and is forecast to reach a crest of 1,008 feet, barring extraordinary rains.
So, there was Nebraska and Iowa down river, 2 years ago. If today's flood happened then, Fort Calhoun, then as now, would sit with the river flowing on all sides, but only one foot of water away from dire trouble from loss of off site power, limited onsite power, and numerous other potential contributors to possible loss of control of the reactor or the spent fuel pool (possibly the more threatened part and certainly the less contained part of the danger). Today, thanks to nick of time regulatory intervention (pesky damned regulators) Fort Calhoun now enjoys a larger margin for error as the largest Missouri River
flood reflected in modern records rages on around it.
But is that story of successful regulatory intervention really good news for public safety? I guess it's good news if a bullet misses me, but it's still bad news that someone is shooting at me. Of course, the way the newspaper puts it, NRC pointed out the little glitch on the flood planning, Omaha Power did a double face palm and got right down to implementing the improvements, and now we're all safe, probably.
That's not how it happened. Omaha Power insisted to the NRC that the company's plans were perfectly OK, even though those plans relied upon flood estimates that even now are nearly being exceeded, failed to document concrete procedures for implementation of their so called plans and relied to a significant extent on last minute improvisation to protect the reactor and cooling pool from catastrophic Missouri River flooding. Don't believe me; read the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's FINAL SIGNIFICANCE DETERMINATION FOR A YELLOW FINDING AND NOTICE OF VIOLATION, NRC INSPECTION REPORT 05000285/2010007, FORT CALHOUN STATION So, now, forget what I said about just 2 wee years ago and all that. Apparently these flood response improvements hadn't been made even one wee year ago.
Here are a couple of my favorite Omaha Power Wiley Coyote Ideas under their old flood response plan and the NRC's well reasoned smack downs:
Omaha Power wanted to protect some buildings from flooding by welding steel plates over the doors at the last minute. NRC said:
your staff indicated that following the procedural requirements would properly protect the facility from the known flooding hazard. This hesitance to consider other methods for hardening the facility against external floods during this period did not support crediting the organization with understanding the need for and developing a different strategy during a postulated flooding scenario. If your procedures were to be followed, it is not clear that attempts to further harden the facility would be made until water levels reached the point that the defenses were breached.
Omaha Power proposed that a
fire engine could be lifted onto the turbine deck and used to pump flood waters from the turbine building into the emergency feedwater storage tank and/or directly to the steam generators.
NRC said:
The use of a single portable pump required using it to pump flood waters from the flood elevation, to the emergency feedwater storage tank, then disconnecting and moving the pump to the 81-foot elevation, and using it to pump from the emergency feedwater storage tank to the steam generators. For this scenario, your staff failed to identify that the human error rate would be significantly higher. With one pump failed, plant personnel would no longer have extra time to establish and maintain flow from the flood waters to the steam generator. The actions required would now be continuous, greatly increasing the likelihood of failure. Additionally, it is unclear how long a single pump could pump from the emergency feedwater storage tank taking suction through a fire hose without maintaining the tank essentially full.
So there we have it my friends. A real confidence builder isn't it. Omaha Power defends reckless unpreparedness in order to avoid investing some money in some pumps and other protective measures. Corporations like to avoid those kinds of expenditures because they don't help generate revenue for the bottom line. As it happened, Omaha Power was a bit more prepared for the current emergency, but almost accidentally.
Of course, some might quickly feel that my talk of "dire trouble" was alarmist at the very least, given that Fort Calhoun has never been more dangerous than a baby bottle throughout this incident and will likely get through it without a single (reported) release of anything radioactively dangerous. Touche. But I will stand by my talk of "dire trouble", given the NRC's own assessment of the cascading consequences of Omaha Power's unpreparedness at Fort Calhoun before the NRC forced the company to make flood improvements:
a. Once flooding reaches 1004-feet MSL, water will be onsite and the ability to move around the site will significantly degrade.
b. Once water level is above 1004.5-feet MSL, water will be on the lower floodgates, prohibiting their removal and making welding to the gates or door frames more difficult.
c. Once water level is above 1008.5-feet MSL, your technical support center will be inundated, further complicating emergency response.
d. Water level at 1009.5-feet MSL would be the first opportunity for the organization to identify that your proceduralized protection scheme was not working. At this point, it would be difficult to change the approach used to harden the facility.
e. At or before a water level of 1010-feet MSL, flood waters would enter the auxiliary building basement, shorting power and submerging pumps. The plant could then experience a station blackout with core damage estimated within 15 to 18 hours without makeup to the steam generators.
If the NRC can foresee it, so can it and "core damage estimated within 15" hours is "dire trouble" in my book.
To me, that's the troubling back story at Fort Calhoun Nuclear station.