1/3: An @NRCgov inspection at the Watts Bar #nuclear plant in #Tennessee found a "chilled work environment" in the Chemistry Department. But you'd never know it from the inspection report cover page. nrc.gov/docs/ML223/ML2…
2/3: A "chilled work environment" means individuals are hesitant to raise nuclear safety concerns for fear
of retaliation and perceive that supervision is retaliating against employees for bringing up concerns.
3/3: "At the time of the inspection, the team determined that many employees in the chemistry department ... have the perceptions that nothing will be done with their concerns ...[and] the amount of turnover and churn among the staff and supervisors is causing tremendous strain."
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1/4: A little light reading for your weekend: @NRCgov has released the first installment of its mammoth, decade-long "Level 3" Probabilistic Risk Assessment study. nrc.gov/docs/ML2206/ML…. It is seeking public comment by June 21. nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc…
2/4: The bottom line: the risk of a large, #Fukushima-like radiological release from the two-unit "reference" plant due to "internal" accidents and internal floods only is about 1 in 11,000 to 1 in 29,000 per critical-year, depending on whether FLEX measures are credited.
3/4: When external events (floods, earthquakes), low-power and shutdown modes, and spent fuel pool accidents are included, based on prior studies, these risks are likely to increase by at least a factor of 4: that is, to as high as 1 in 2,500 per year.
I noticed there was a lot of interest in #Pennsylvania in my tweet about the inoperable high-pressure coolant injection (HPCI) system at the Limerick-1 #nuclear reactor. The HPCI is needed to provide emergency makeup water if a small-break loss-of-coolant accident occurs.
The Limerick plant was previously allowed to operate for 14 days without a functioning HPCI. Last year @NRCgov approved a "risk-informed" license amendment allowing outages of HPCI or other emergency systems of up to 30 days. For more details, please see nrc.gov/docs/ML2003/ML…
The basic logic is that the likelihood of such an accident occurring is so small that the increased risk to the public of the outage extension is also small. Plant owners must demonstrate this using detailed risk calculations.
To put to rest the erroneous claim that a reactivity excursion and sodium boiling can't occur in a fast reactor, please see the following results for a transient with EM pump failure from the @NRCgov preapplication safety review for the PRISM reactor, the model for the Natrium.
1. Positive sodium density reactivity increase versus negative reactivity from core expansion.