The nuke next door
Is the Clinton nuclear plant prepared for a Fukushima-level disaster?
ENERGY | Rachel Wells
On Friday, March 11, 2011, an afternoon earthquake with a 9.0 magnitude struck off the coast of Japan, unleashing a 14-meter tsunami that about an hour later would devastate the country’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant site. Designed only to withstand a tsunami of less than 6 meters, three nuclear reactors lost power as the natural disaster knocked out offsite power and swept away backup generators. Unable to cool the reactors and with spent fuel pools losing water, attempts to cool the fuel through venting and multiple hydrogen explosions caused the release of radioactive material into the environment.
Now, even 50 miles from the reactor sites, children are kept indoors; Japan’s economy is expected to wane due to power shortages; and the damaged reactors’ owner, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), is facing a bill of billions of dollars just for its emergency efforts in shutting down and cooling the reactors, according to various news reports.
While a tsunami isn’t likely to strike Springfield’s nearest nuclear neighbor – the 65-mile distant Clinton Power Station in DeWitt County – the crisis in Fukushima has called into question the safety of nuclear power plants across the U.S. and the preparedness of emergency managers to deal with a similar multi-pronged disaster.
Already, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in response to Fukushima has completed initial inspections at each of the country’s 104 nuclear reactors. Through March and April, inspectors were charged with assessing each plant’s ability to react to multiple, concurrent threats, including power blackouts, fires, floods and earthquakes.
“Our inspectors found all the reactors would be kept safe even in the event their regular safety systems were affected by these events,” said Eric Leeds, director of the NRC Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, in a May 13 news release concerning the post- Fukushima inspections. But he added that, “a few plants have to do a better job maintaining the necessary resources and procedures.”
A closer look at the inspection report for Clinton’s power plant, owned by Exelon
Nuclear, reveals several issues, including: a fire pump in such poor condition that it had to be shut down during a test run; hydrogen igniters (used to keep the gas from accumulating into an explosion risk) that lacked adequate power supplies; and firefighting equipment stored in buildings susceptible to earthquake damage.
Clinton power plant spokesperson Bill Harris says all of the post-Fukushima inspection issues are minor. “They found no significant safety findings,” Harris says, echoing an NRC statement repeated throughout the report. Harris says that all of the identified systems were backup systems and not the primary line of defense in the event of an accident or natural disaster.
The report also notes, however, two instances in which plant operators had previously noticed nonfunctioning or inadequately functioning equipment but had not made strides to correct the issues. The first instance involved the fire pump operators shut down early during the NRC inspection. “During the past year, there have been several material condition issues identified by the licensee,” the report states, adding that “no specific commitments were found during the review for the licensee to maintain this pump.” The other instance referred to one of three redundant switches for a flood protection valve that plant operators discovered wasn’t working in July 2010. Despite the discovery, operators “signed off the functional test as satisfactory.”
Harris says all of the issues listed in the report have been put into a tracking system and “are all being addressed, which is the really important thing.”
“Again, there are no significant deficiencies,” he says. “All of the systems they looked at would perform their intended function. All of the things are things that will make the system better or optimize operations of these components. … We’re constantly looking at these complex systems and doing the things we need to do to make them work better.”
Harris adds that the plant, perched on the edge of Clinton Lake, sits about 40 feet above the lake levels during the largest recorded flood. While the fire protection system may be at risk during an earthquake, according to the inspection reports, Exelon points out in an April 2011 fact sheet that diesel generators and their fuel, as well as emergency reactor cooling systems, are designed to withstand seismic waves measuring between 6.0 and 6.9 on the Richter scale.
