March 7, 2013
Bill Borchardt
Executive Director for Operations
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington, DC 20555-0001
Dear Mr. Bochardt,
Request an emergency and for a exigent bases, that the Pilgrim Nuclear plant be immediately shut down.
Don't tell me just before the Nor'easter Nimo struck the Pilgrim plant with a leaking safety relief valve and down at 80%, Entergy was intending to operate that plant with a defective leaking safety relief valve till the next refuel outage? Tell it ain't so. It certainly looks like with the current leak today that is intending to operate till next month.
Is the game plan today to incrementally increase reactor power from 94% by 1% to see if a new SRV leak is getting worse?
Timeline:
1) New three stage safety relief valves installed in the plant around May 2011.
2) First leak and shut down on Dec, 26. 2011 (SRV RV-203-3D).
3) Second leak and shut down on Jan 20, 2013 (SRV RV-203-3B).
4) Third leak occurred a few weeks later and the plant was at a restrcited 84% power...the Nemo blizzard tripped the plant. The NRC promised these valves are fixed before startup. (SRV RV-203-3B).
5) Basically, they operated for 20 days at 100% power operation post shutdown, then reported on Feb 27 the plant is operating at 94% power with no explained reason until today. The reason for the down power was kept secret from the public.
6) Today March 7, 2013 I called the NRC's public relation people and the agency told me they had indications of a leak and that is why the plant is at a restricted power level.
Don't forget the repetitive nature of the recently broken scram discharge volume vent and drain valves...implies Entergy is incapable of maintaining safety components of a nuclear plant.
The repeated nature of the failure of the safety relief valves means Entergy doesn't know the mechanism of the failure...it is a common mode failure. The design and manufacture of these valves are defective and it is extremely unsafe to operate a nuclear plant with all safety relief valves being INOP. A condition adverse to quality...
The NRC should have made a public comment about the new leaking safety relief when they first became aware of th leak. The implication is the agency was going to allow the plant to operate with unsafe SRVs until the refueling outage next month. The NRC is involved in a serious cover-up of an extremely unsafe operation of a nuclear power.
1) Request an immediate shutdown the Pilgrim Plant.
2) The is the second time I requested a special NRC inspection concerning the defective SRV valves.
3) Not allow the plant to restart Pilgrim until they fully understand the past failure mechanisms of the four bad new three stage safety relief valves.
4) Request the OIG investigate this NRC cover-up to keep an unsafe nuclear plant at power.
References:
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