How the NRC is Responding to the Cooling Water Leak At the Palisades Nuclear Plant

How the NRC is Responding to the Cooling Water Leak At the Palisades Nuclear Plant

How the NRC is Responding to the Cooling Water Leak At the Palisades Nuclear Plant

1 Comment Posted by Moderator on February 20, 2013

Prema Chandrathil

Region III Public Affairs Officer

 

On Friday, the Palisades plant in Covert, Mich., shut down so plant personnel could find and repair a leak somewhere in the reactor’s cooling water system. Soon after, the NRC dispatched an additional inspector from the Regional III office, located in Lisle, Ill., with a background in mechanical testing and repairs. He supplements the two NRC resident inspectors as they evaluate the plant’s repair activities.
For more than a week now, the NRC resident inspectors on site have been following the actions taken by workers at Palisades to find the leak. The resident inspectors reviewed the data. They also watched plant workers as they isolated different parts of the system to conduct tests to try and identify exactly where the leak was coming from.
Plant workers caught the problem because the water level in the component cooling water system was going down slowly. This system uses non-reactor water to cool certain safety equipment. Per NRC regulations the system is required to be monitored. When the plant shut down the system was leaking about 35 gallons per hour. This water was captured and released to Lake Michigan through an established monitored release path. The leak did not place the plant or the public in danger.
It’s now believed a heat exchanger in the system is the source of the leak. A heat exchanger is basically a box that contains around 2,000 tubes. The tubes have water running through them to remove heat from equipment, such as seals or pumps. This heat exchanger plays an important role to cool necessary equipment during normal operation, but also during potential accident scenarios.
Palisades has two safety-related heat exchangers in this particular system; both are required by NRC regulations to be in working condition and ready to respond at a moment’s notice. With one of the two exchangers potentially not working right the plant decided to shut down before the regulations required it. NRC regulations state if there is a problem with the heat exchanger it would need to be fixed within 72 hours. If that’s not possible the regulations require the plant to shut down to find the leak and make the appropriate repairs. The plant will only be able to restart when the heat exchanger is working correctly.
Over the weekend all three NRC inspectors continued to monitor and assess the repair work to find and fix the leak. The NRC will continue to closely follow this event and observe how the plant goes about these activities with safety in mind from start to finish. We know the community is interested and concerned about these types of issues and continue to work to keep our commitment to ensure they are informed.
One of our initiatives is to provide summaries of conversations between the NRC and plant staff to the public. A summary of such a conversation about this leak, which took place on Thursday, Feb.14, will be available to the public in the near future. Our assessment of this issue will also be documented in a publically available inspection report.